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Floury Friday with Kate Downham

How to bake with spelt

Published about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Spelt is an ancient grain that has a few quirks that you will want to know before you try using it to replace wheat. In this email I’ll be sharing how to work with spelt, and the best recipes to make with it.
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Spelt is related to wheat, but many people who can't handle modern wheat will find that they can eat spelt without problems, especially when it's slowly fermented in a sourdough bread. Spelt does contain gluten, so it's not suitable for celiacs.

How to work with spelt

Spelt makes beautiful tasting bread, it has a lovely nutty flavour that works perfectly on its own, or mixed with other grains.

While spelt can be used 1:1 to replace wheat, it doesn’t handle high hydration levels in the same way as wheat, so you will either want to bake it in a loaf pan, reduce the hydration level slightly, or just accept that you’ll end up with a flatter freeform loaf.

I really enjoy the benefits of a high hydration dough: reliable fermentation in cool temperatures, great oven spring, lots of bubbles, and a beautiful texture to the crumb, so when I’m baking with spelt, I always prefer to keep the hydration quite high, it just means that the spelt dough is best contained within the confines of a loaf pan.

When strengthening spelt doughs, I use the same gentle stretch and fold approach that I use for wheat breads, and it works beautifully.

Extensibility vs elasticity in gluten

Extensible proteins are the types of proteins found in flour that make your dough extra stretchy. Elastic proteins are those that make your dough bouncy and more likely to hold its shape. Gluten-containing grains contain a mixture of these two proteins.

Compared to wheat, spelt has more of the proteins that make it extensible, rather than elastic. This means it will create breads that are easy to roll out or hand shape, but may have a bit more trouble holding that shape during proofing when compared to wheat. Spelt breads also won’t show the same springy signs of gluten development when compared to wheat doughs.

Any dough that needs to be rolled out or tightly shaped can benefit from having some of the wheat flour replaced with spelt.

My favourite ways to use spelt

• Sandwich breads

• Mixed with rye and wheat in a pan loaf

• Pretzels

• Baguettes

• Added to wheat doughs to bring some extra flavour

• Sprouted and added to bread dough (sprouting brings out the natural sweetness in the grain)

May your bread always be delicious. Floury regards,
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Kate

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P.S. If you'd like to access an archive of all previous Floury Friday emails, simply visit http://katedownham.kit.com.

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