Wholegrain spelt pain a l'ancienne

Spelt was an important cereal in Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. Today it has survived as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain (mainly in Asturias) and has found a new market as a health food: spelt requires fewer fertilisers as it is resistant to diseases so it is easy to find organic spelt.

So with my wholegrain spelt decided last night to make the well known in this blog pain a l'ancienne. I think we always have make this bread in white versions so a bit of a challenge using an wholemeal flour, and spelt.

So mixed the ingredients last night:

- 380g wholegrain spelt flour
- 300g water (very cold)
- 7g salt
- 4g dried yeast

And I said mixed because as you know you don't knead this bread. All well mix and put it in the fridge until this morning (9 hours). then I left it at room temperature for 2 hours until double the size. With an spatula and loads of flour, tried to make 3 baguettes and oven, 230C for 10 min first with some water/steam and then 25 at 200C. 5 minutes extra with the oven off and the door open.

The result was a bit different as I used to have for a pain a l'ancienne: no big alveolus, breadcrumb a bit more compact, probably due to the type of flour but taste was great. You can definitely feel the 9 hours in the fridge and the flavour of the wholegrain spelt.

Looking forward to use again spelt flour. I found a interesting web: a spanish company producing local spelt flour (Triticum aestivum sub. Spelta). They not only sell white and wholemeal spelt flout but the grain as well. It could be another interesting step producing our own spelt flour. anyone else up to? The company is called Escanda Asturiana

deconstruction: hummus bread

I was chatting last week with Patrick Ryan in twitter as he wanted to bake a bread and I suggested using chickpea flour. I really like using it and it's not the first time I bake something with chickpea flour (pan a l'ancienne or these Bollos de azafran lidia baked). Texture and flavour are unique.

But I wanted to twist this bread and thinking what to do came up hummus, where the main ingredient is chickpeas. So why dont use the ingredients of hummus and bake a bread? voila, and this is how this bread was made. There are a few different versions of hummus but most of them have chickpeas, olive oil, lemon, garlic and salt. I used a few more as I like hummus with tahini, so that's my recipe (be aware that still my baking equipment is in Belfast, so weight is not very accurate):

- 300g strong white flour
- 125g chickpea flout
- 100g spelt flour
- 2tbs dried yeast
- 10g salt
- 250ml water
- 40g olive oil
- 50g tahini
- 1tbs paprika
- 50g chickpeas ()
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 tbs lemon juice
- pepper

Of course I was afraid that this experiment wouldn't work for several reasons: the dough was too heavy (chickpea flour, chickpeas and tahini), the combination of flavours after baking wouldn't go well etc. When I was kneading it was quite difficult to work with the dough but I kneaded for 15 minutes and put it to prove for 1hour and a half. The dough responded and raise quite well so I kneaded for a few seconds and put it back to prove for another 1 hour and a half, but this time it wasn't that good. Anyway, oven at 230 °C for 15 minutes and another 30 minutes at 190 °C.

hummus bread

The result, very unusual flavour, you can feel all the ingredients, maybe a touch bitter and too much tahini so net time I will put less. Similar in consistency to a soda bread. But overall an interested experiment.

hummus bread

sourdough: day 1

new batches of sourdough: wholemeal, white and spelt...grow, grow, grow...can't wait to use them!

left to right: wholemeal, white and spelt

lidia bread

lidia was here in cork for a week with eva and paula. we had a great time, visiting the island, lovely places like cobh, kinsale, killarney, etc, but we had time to cook and bake and to create this blog. So our main aim was and is to share recipe in the distance as we three live in different cities and myself in a different country, so we can put here attempts and doubts and discoveries and questions mainly about bread but also you will find some baking. And while sharing between us we can share with everybody else and enrich this blog with people who want to participate too. so do not be shy.

we made my sourdough, starting with strong wholemeal flour, and after 2 days the sourdough was crazy: double every 12 hours, millions of bubbles and overflowing the glass jar. So we decided to made a white sourdough so we fed it with strong organic white flour. i think this change didn't like it, didn't die but its activity is very slow since then. i m going to feed it today with strong wholemeal flour and put it finally in the fridge. and let's pray it is ok.

so as we said before, while waiting for the sourdough we made a couple of breads, using fresh yeast. the first one, the one i called lidia bread, was a strong flavour wholemeal bread. here is the recipe:

500g organic spelt flour
150g organic wholemeal rye flour
150 strong wholemeal flour
30g fresh yeast
17g salt
400g water

the bread has two fermentation of around 3 hours and then oven for 50 min, first 15 min at maximum temperature (in my oven it's around 140 celsius degrees) and the at 190 degrees. we put some water in a tray underneath the bread, and we wasn't able to spray the bread with water basically because we forgot to buy the spray bottle :-) but it came finally crispy enough.



so the result was a lovely and rich brown bread, during the fermentation the dough grew quiet well but in the oven we didn't get many alveolus, maybe because of the yeast, maybe because it has a high proportion of wholemeal flour or even because of the oven, as it was too close to the top inside of it. Nevertheless the texture and the flavour was unique. lidia promised she is going to try to make it again using this time her sourdough so i am really looking forward for her to make it and share with us. i am sure she will improve it.



and as the bread has only one destiny to fulfill, we all had dinner with it that night, and our food was enhanced with this powerful homemade bread. here you can see a sample with tapenade, semi sun dry tomatoes and feta cheese. it s true as well as lidia said the this bread get even better if you toast it. i m getting hungry again ;-)