Sunday, July 18, 2010

Sprouted Spelt/Whole Wheat Bread > Whole Wheat Bread



This is the first bread baking blog post of what I hope will be many on 9 Inch Meringue. Paul and I are both really jazzed about experimenting with bread and hope to some day have a whole catalog's worth of bread recipes available for you here. With this experiment we decided to make two different loafs of bread: one using mostly sprouted spelt flour and one using entirely whole wheat flour.
You will need:
1.5 cups of lukewarm water
3/4 Tbs of dry active yeast (real cheap in bulk at a food co-op)
1/8 cup of a sweetener (we used molasses. you could also use honey or sugar)
1/2 cup of milk
1 pinch of salt
1 40oz of Malt Liquor (we used Camo Naturally Brewed Silver Ice xxXxx high gravity lager)
3.5 cups of flour (for one loaf we used 3.5 of just wheat, the other 2.5 spelt & 1 wheat)
1/6 cup of oil or butter (we used sunflower oil and were really happy with our results)
additional flour for kneading (and probably a lot of it)

-First things first. open your 40oz and take a sip. you have a lot of baking ahead of you and this will really come in handy during those long waits.
-Make the yeast sponge. Dissolve the yeast into the water and add the molasses and milk. if you are using actual milk (and not soy or almond, etc.), you must first scald the milk and let it cool down before you add it to yeast. after you put all this stuff in you should beat the shit out of it until it's like a thick pancake like batter. Let it rise a while, maybe even 45 minutes. it will grow and get real bubbly
-Add the salt and oil (or butter) and then another 1.5+ cups of spelt flour (or whatever). Add just enough flour so you can get it out of the bowl in one piece.
-Drink your 40oz
-KNEAD! this is the fun part. Do it for ad least 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary until it is smooth. flatter it out, dust it with flour, and let it rise for 50+ minutes (or until double in size). do this step twice for an even fluffier bread.
-Drink your 40oz
-Punch it down to get all that dank air out, form it into a loaf, place it on a greased pan, and let rise for 25+ minutes. Preheat the over to 350 F
-Drink your 40oz
-Cut sweet designs on the bread and then put it in the over for about an hour.
-(optional) take the bread out partially through and brush it with an egg wash (beaten egg whites and water and/or salt). Paul recommends putting the egg yolk into your 40oz
-Drink your 40oz
-Eat dat bread
It might look like this when your bread and 40oz are done. These loaves came out HUGE. The spelt loaf had a lot of flavor compared to the wheat. However, the wheat loaf did have a better consistency and made better toast.











What we learned:
-Camo was a bad choice. That 5th "x" was really too much. We had planned on writing this post immediately after baking, but found ourselves at 2AM entirely way too drunk to do so. After my first few sips I was already making mistakes. Baking is a science. As such, it requires a certain level of care and consideration in order to bake effectively. Camo is NOT a good choice of 40oz to bake with. The egg yolk in the Camo actually made it better.
-Wheat bread tasted better with honey
-Sunflower oil and Molasses were good choices.
-Sprouted spelt flour ruleZ.





(click on the image to enlarge it)

No comments:

Post a Comment