Spelt bread with honey
Spelt is a very old variety of wheat, but I heard it should be handled more gently than wheat and gives a delicate dough. I followed recipe form J. Hamelman’s “Bread” (sources).
Time Planning
It will take 12-14 hours to prepare the levain, 2 hours bulk rise, one hour final proof, 40 minutes baking. You should fit into 19 hours.Ingredients
Levain
- 230 g dark spelt flour
- 150 g water
- 10 g salt
- 0.5 g fresh yeast or 0.2 g instant
Final dough
- 450 g dark spelt flour
- 230 g strong wheat flour
- 500 g water
- 10 g salt
- 12 g fresh yeast or 4 g instant yeast
- 40 g honey. I used buckwheat which made the bread darker and dominated the flavour. I would recommend using something milder to taste something different, although this one was very tasty with cooked meat
- Levain
Spelt bread with honey
Instructions
Mix yeast with water, add flour and mix until you get a smooth levain. Leave for 12-14 hours in room temperature
Mix all final dough ingredients except the levain. I recommend starting with 90% of the water. Mix this for 3 minutes on lower speed and gradually add levain. If the dough is too stiff, add remaining water. Finish mixing for 3 minutes on higher speed
Leave for two hours to rise. Do a stretch and fold after one hour
Shape a loaf or two smaller ones and put in dusted baskets. Put the baskets into plastic bags and set aside for one hour for final rise
Set your oven to 230 C without fan (know your oven). If You’re using a stone or iron cast sheet, give it 40 minutes or so before placing bread on it
Put your loaf in the oven, add a lot of steam and bake for 40 minutes. When you see them getting a dark colour, begin to gradually release steam. The honey will cause the crust to get quite a dark colour, but if you feel it’s happening to fast, reduce the temperature to 210 C
Spelt bread with honey - the crumb Spelt bread with honey – the crumb
If you have two baskets, I recommend dividing the dough as there was too much dough for my 2kg banneton. It also went flat in the oven, but then rose nicely during baking.
I added all the water from the recipe straight away, but it feels that it was too much. Next time I’ll use 90% first.
The crumb was very soft, much softer than whatever I usually bake. After all, it’s a yeast only bread. The crust was also very thin, as I was afraid I would burn it.
In terms of flavour, as mentioned, buckwheat honey dominated it. Next time I would probably use acacia honey.
