Tuesday, August 28, 2012

A Follow-up Workshop - Spelt Bread and Sourdough

Yesterday Tobi, Tania, Jaci and Lyndal got together to do Tobi's Follow-up Bread Making Workshop.

Before the Workshop:
Tania's husband can't eat "normal" wheat so we decided to investigate options for gluten-free breads.  We found it quite confusing as most gluten-free plain flours don't seem to be able to be exchanged for wheat plain flour, but need to have other agents added, although what wasn't always clear.  I found one direction suggesting xanthum gum, but couldn't find any of that, and other directions suggesting to use pre-mixed gluten-free bread mixes.  But a look at all the additives in the packets put me off that idea immediately.  Ultimately Tania discovered that her husband could eat Spelt, which while not gluten-free, is an ancient wheat grain that is much more easily tolerated by people with wheat problems.  So we set off on an experiment with several different spelt flour recipes.

(If anyone has any great true gluten-free bread bread recipes we'd love you to put a link in the Comments below so we can try them.)

Tania tried out this Spelt Loaf before the workshop and brought it along to pop in the oven for us to eat.  It was delicious, really light and springy, and great this morning as toast! 
At the Workshop:
We started the workshop by making a simple loaf, as we did in the first breadmaking workshop, but this time used a recipe from Sarah at Gladys in the Garden.  This was really quick, just mix the ingredients together and put it in the oven for about 30 minutes.  We exchanged Sarah's list of exotic flours for spelt flour.  It worked really well (loaf on left in the photo above).  Spelt flour certainly makes for tasty bread.  You can see from the photo below that this recipe is quite "cakey" in its consistency before it is baked.
Then for the main event we made sourdough, using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe as this is the recipe that I keep going back to as it is the easiest to fit around my day, even though it does take 24hrs to make!  I pre-mixed the "sponge" overnight for everyone, and then we did the next step of adding all the flour and kneading together.  Everyone took their dough home to rise overnight and cook this morning.
For Tania's loaf we decided to see if we could just replace the plain flour with Spelt flour, so a couple of days beforehand I took half a cup of my starter and began converting it to Spelt starter by feeding it with Spelt.  This seemed to work fine, and the sponge rose exactly the same as the plain flour sponges.
We finished the session with a cuppa and couple of slices of fresh bread spread with butter and delicious organic Tasmanian Leatherwood honey.

After the Workshop:
As a final experiment Tania had also mixed up a Spelt loaf in her bread-making machine before she left for the workshop.  It also came out really well, although much denser than the other loaves.  You just don't get that same crusty look though, do you?!

The outcome of all the other sourdough loaves this morning was also terrific:

Jaci's bread: "Wow it worked. Yay. Yum!"


4 comments:

  1. Great work. Love the experimentation.

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  2. I am so happy that you tried the recipe I posted, and that it was successful. Thank you for mentioning my blog and recipe :). I feel very lucky. I love how you experimented with the loaves. It looks like it would have been a great day.
    x

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  3. From the other workshop participant, Lyndal:
    My loaf turned out a bit flat, but I sliced it thin and baked the slices slowly till I had a pile of yummy crispy bread for dips!
    I want to upload the photo of my loaf, but am having technical difficulties related to hardware (my old and decrepit phone upon which resides the photograph) and software (the stuff inside my head that just doesn't deal well with IT problems...)
    Thanks Tobi and goyles for a lovely day :)

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  4. I participated in Tobi's follow-up Sourdough and Spelt Breadmaking workshop on 26th Aug 2012 and have come away with a wealth of new knowledge! I had no idea about needing a 'starter' to make sourdough bread, and now thanks to Tobi's workshop I am trying to get a Spelt starter on the go so that I can make Spelt Sourdough. Prior to this workshop I had only ever made bread in the breadmaker that I bought years ago, and now I feel that I have just begun the journey of real breadmaking! Thanks Tobi! We definitely achieved Rule #3 - we had a lot of fun! Tania xo

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