It's Time to Bake Bread

"The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight."

The Art of Eating, M. F. K. Fisher, (1908-1992)

For a long time now I have wanted to make my own sourdough spelt bread.  Yet I have no experience in bread baking - my aunty used to bake bread but stopped before I was old enough to learn from her.  Baking bread was something my mother never did in my memory.  She did make a loaf in the bread maker however.

My husband has assumed the bread making role in our family regularly baking spelt bread in our bread maker.  He makes a lovely loaf which my children enjoy.  So do I in recent times as I am unable to buy the lovely spelt sourdough loaf I regularly purchased at Dough at the Adelaide Central Markets before we moved.

However my goal is still unachieved - baking my own spelt sourdough.  I still haven't found a blogger who has found success to this end.  So I'll have to keep searching.  I have however made a couple of friends who are experimenting with sourdough bread baking so I look forward to some baking days with them.  I don't they think are using spelt but at least I will progress further in my quest to bake sourdough bread.

Today, thanks to the inspiration of Rhonda's post yesterday on Five Minute Bread and a Spelt Bread Recipe published by Four Leaf, I have two loaves of spelt bread in the oven.  We are eagerly anticipating a lunch of hot bread dripping with butter and/or olive oil along with some delicious Potato and Leek Soup.  The smell of my home is divine today and while I don't actually feel hungry yet, I am beginning to salivate with the fragrance tickling my nose.

The mix started to be seemingly a little dry, yet I persisted.

After time to rise, punching back and rising again (which I did in a preheated oven turned off due to our cold weather today),

the loaves were kneaded lighty, placed in warm pans and ready to bake.

Just look at the results.  The girls are were very eager to have our lunch when it was ready.

Olive Oil, Honey and Nutmeg Biscuits

To a bee, honey is work
To us, it is leisure, luxury, pleasure.
If only the eating thereof
would fill us with the spirit of hard work.
~Corri Alius

I have finally perfected our new healthy biscuit recipe - Olive Oil, Honey and Nutmeg Biscuits.  These biscuits have very minimal sugar in them and no butter at all.  They are also made with wholemeal spelt flour but you could substitute your flour of choice.  They are reminiscent of the Arnott's Honey Jumble biscuits I consumed ravenously as a child - a little chewy and oh so delicious.  I was very lucky to eat the last half of one with my cup of tea this morning after little Eee begged for that last longed for biscuit remaining in the jar.  Yes, we shared it.

¼ cup castor sugar

¼ cup olive oil

small ¼ cup honey

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1¾ cups wholemeal spelt flour

¼ teaspoon bicarb soda

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1-2 teaspoons nutmeg to taste 

(I like my nutmeg and put in 2 teaspoons to compliment the strong flavour of our honey)

½ cup raisins or sultanas

Preheat your oven to 180℃/375℉.  Line two oven trays with baking paper or your silicon biscuit baking mat.  Put sugar, oil, honey, egg and vanilla into a bowl of your electric mixmaster and beat for 2 minutes.

Sift the flour, soda, cream of tartar and nutmeg and add to the thickened wet mix.  Mix together until well combined.  Stir through the raisins.

Dollop in spoonfuls onto your tray to bake.  Decorate the top with tiny slivers of Fair Trade dark chocolate scraped with a knife to sit delicately on top of each biscuit.  We have tried decorating with raisins also but found that the time in the oven baked them a little too hard - they are yummiest when inside.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.  Rest on a tray for 5 minutes until cool.  You can then transfer them to a wire rack and see how long they last sitting around in your kitchen :).

Enjoy these little morsels of yumminess which are all good for you.  Really they are!  They are the perfect snack for a little toddler whose delicate mouth delights in the softness of a chewy bikky.

If you haven't yet entered a comment for my little giveaway.  Now is your last chance as we will draw the winner over the weekend.  So look out for an announcement on Monday.

Spelt Bread

"The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight."

The Art of Eating, M. F. K. Fisher, (1908-1992)

You will always find Spelt bread in our house.  Spelt flour is one of the grains I buy for our family's consumption.   We do just about everything we once did with wheat flour with spelt flour.  It is highly nutritious and wonderful for baking.  We find it easy to digest and, as we aim for a diet low in gluten, spelt suits us well in our bid for a healthier diet.  Sadly supply is not keeping up with demand and I am not always able to purchase it from my suppliers - Goodies and Grains or the market's Mega Health shop.   I have recently found this very well-priced supplier in Bellingen NSW so if you live near there give it a go.   My sister says she can purchase spelt for a reasonable price also in Brisbane.   Much of our Spelt Flour is supplied from Canada but I am glad to read that we are working to optimise the quality and yield of spelt under production in south east Australia.  Wholemeal Spelt seems to be more available currently, however my Generous Gentleman says white (or a combination of White and Wholemeal) bakes a better loaf of bread.  The loaf you see here is 100% wholemeal.  

My husband bakes bread for our family about every 4 to 5 days.  He has worked for a couple of years on this recipe to perfect it.  It's now very much enjoyed predominantly by himself and our two girls.  

Now, to make the bread.

First of all you'll need to activate the yeast.  Stir 3 teaspoons of dried yeast in 1 cup of warm water and let it sit while you prepare the dry ingredients.

Prepare the flour by sifting 4 cups of wholemeal or white spelt flour with 1 teaspoon of Xanthum Gum.  (Some say you can substitute Guar Gum but we haven't tried this.)  It is there to bind the bread.

Prepare the wet ingredients by placing the following into the bread pan from your Bread Maker in this order:

1 to 1 ½ cups water (depending on which type of flour you are using.  Wholemeal needs more water than white).

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon sea salt

Add the flour to the breadpan.  Add the yeast combination to the pan, then set it to work.

Bake it on a Rapid or Quick Bread setting.  Being low in gluten, spelt does not need as much time to knead and rise.

You may need to change a few things here to suit your own breadmaker, they are all a bit different.  We use a Breville Bread Master Big Loaf Model No. BB380.

Our loaf is quite a dense one which is lovely for toast.  Who can resist, however, the softness of bread and crispy crust once it is directly removed from the breadmaker.  Certainly not my two little girls.

If you don't have a bread maker I have just stumbled across this recipe for a simple spelt loaf from a favourite local supplier of organic grains Four Leaf Milling in Tarlee, Clare Valley, South Australia.  I will be picking up some of their spelt next time we pass by and also searching to see what their supply of Spelt Flour is like here in Adelaide.  They have a "Where to Buy" feature on their home page which will assist you in buying their wonderful products in your state.  They also make spelt flakes, spelt bran as well as spelt flour.  Also some yummy millet flakes and fabulous baby rice, millet and porridge etc.  OK now I am raving, but really the taste is just so fresh I can't go past it.  I grew up with a family farm nearby, I know the flavour of grains nibbled directly from the plant (albeit wheat and barley predominantly), these products take me down memory lane.

All the best with your spelt bread baking.  Please pop back here briefly to comment and let me know.