Although I bake at least one loaf per week, it’s been a while since I did a ‘bready’ Cakes & Bakes post. This spelt bread recipe is from a book we’ve previously reviewed, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s How to Make Bread.

Owing to the rise in popularity of low-gluten cooking, spelt flour is getting much easier to get hold of – most large supermarkets and independent health food shops now stock it. I have to admit I’d never heard of Kamut prior to baking this loaf.

Kamut or spelt bread

Print recipe Pin recipe

Ingredients

  

• 300 g/2½ cups Kamut khorason flour or (wholegrain) spelt flour
• 6 g/1 tsp salt
• 3 g fresh yeast or 2g/¾ tsp dried/active dry yeast
• 200-230 g/230ml/up to 1 cup warm water

Instructions

 

• In one (smaller) mixing bowl, mix the flour and salt together and set aside. This is the dry mixture
• In another (larger) mixing bowl, weigh out the yeast, add the water and stir until the yeast has dissolved. (You will need slightly less water if you're using Kamut flour.) This is the wet mixture
• Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon and then your hands until they come together to form a dough
• Cover with the bowl that had the dry mixture in it and let stand for 10 minutes
• Knead the dough as instructed in photos I, J & K in the illustrated page here
• Cover the bowl again and let stand for 10 minutes
• Repeat steps 5 & 6 twice, then step 5 again. Cover the bowl again and let rise for 1 hour
• Punch down the dough with your fist
• Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour
• Remover the dough from the bowl and place it on the floured work surface
• Gently flatten into an oval. Fold the right end over into the middle, then the left
• Press down slightly to seal the dough together. You will now have a roughly rectangular shape.
• Pull & fold the top of the rectangle one third of the way toward the middle, pressing it into the dough
• Swivel it 180º and keep folding as in step 13 until you have a shape roughly the size of your loaf pan
• Place the dough inside the prepared loaf pan, seam-side down
• Cover the loaf pan and let rise until slightly less than double the size - about 30-45 minutes
• About halfway through the rising, preheat the oven to 240ºC/450ºF/Gas mark 9. Place a roasting pan at the bottom of the oven to preheat. Fill a cup with water and set aside
• When the dough has finished rising, remove the bowl or covering
• Place the bread in the preheated oven. Pour the reserved cupful of water carefully onto the hot roasting pan and lower the temperature to 220ºC/425ºF/Gas mark 7
• Bake for about 35 minutes or until brown
• Turn the bread out of the loaf pan and set on a wire rack to cool

Tools: 1 500g/1lb loaf pan (greased with vegetable oil). Graduated mixing bowls (I like to use clear glass bowls so I can keep an eye on where the rise is at). Flexible plastic dough scraper/cutter (optional).