Our glorious Kitchen of the Month, Ilva, has presented the Babes and all desiring to be Bread Baking Buddies with a most interesting flour and baking technique.  This recipe would have delighted me just because it was using spelt flour.  Spelt has been on my list to try for literally years – I’m that slow.

Here’s how Ilva introduced this bread:

This time we are back to basics, a loaf of good bread, simple but with difference, this one you don’t knead but you whip! And you whip it good! It’s from a bread book by the Danish baker Hanne Risgaard and it is called Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry. I have made several breads and cakes out of and they have all been good. I made this bread months ago and we liked it a lot, it has a great crust and texture. The dough is soft/wet but not soft like the Croc, it is much easier to work with. She uses spelt flour, both sifted and whole-spelt but I used only sifted spelt flour and then normal wholewheat flour. If you can find spelt flour use it because it has a nice flavour, if not you can try some other flour that absorbs water more or less to the same degree. The spelt flour I find here is similar to AP flour.

… and then there was … the Whip!

There was this whip …  The whip provoked great and long discussions: I tried it and gave up, went to the dough hook J-thingy; I didn’t even try it, it just seemed impractical, started with the dough hook; Hey, it works.  The continuum ran the gauntlet with the whip flying all the time.

Because I wanted to get it right, I’m baking this a 2nd time.  I wanted to redo it so as to get lowering the oven from 480° to 410°; I wanted to try the balloon whisk; I wanted to get a photo of the wild gluten strands (that Karen calls it like it is: snot).  Three things and I corrected all of those … except I mixed it up Wednesday, rested it overnight … ah, no time to bake … rested it 2 overnights.  The oven warms to ° as we speak.

NOW I’ve discovered that even though, as you will see, the recipe clearly calls for spelt flour twice and that’s what I used, it would seem that most every Babe except me used spelt and some other flour – rye, whole wheat but something other than spelt.  I’m jealous, they got lighter looking breads … but I’m also delighted to find that you can bake a 100% spelt loaf and it is truly delicious.  We did like this bread very much.  One day soon perhaps I’ll try this again and use about 160 grams bread flour for some of the 1000 grams of spelt.

BBB Whipped Bread

Recipe By: Ilva: from Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry by Hanne Risgaard
Yield: 2 loaves

840 grams 29,63 oz sifted spelt flour
160 grams 5,64 oz whole-spelt flour

(I used 1000 grams whole grain spelt flour total)
30 grams flax seed meal
10  grams 0,35 oz fresh yeast (I used 2.5 teaspoons active dry yeast)
20  grams 0,70 oz salt
800 grams 28,21 oz water, approx

Directions:

1. Mix the two types of flour in the mixing bowl, yeast, salt and water. Mix the dough at high speed using a whisk until the dough no longer sticks to the sides and bottom of the bowl. (By-golly, the balloon whisk works and in just about the same time that the dough hook took.)  Scrape the soft dough off the whisk, put a lid on the mixing bowl, and let the dough rest in the fridge overnight.  I’m sure there is lea-way here but two nights in the fridge is not recommended.

2. The next day, allow the dough to warm for a couple of hours before continuing.

3. Gently turn the dough onto a generously floured work surface

The dough yawns at the Whip.

and dust the top of the dough with a little – ha I used LOTS, this stuff is sticky – flour. Divide the dough into four equal-size pieces.

Divide into four pieces

4. Quickly twist the pieces together in pairs, preserving as much air in the dough as possible. Place the two twisted loaves on separate peels lined with parchment paper. Let them proof until nearly doubled in volume.

Fat to skinny ends …

5. Preheat the convection oven with baking stone to 250°C/480°F.

… and do the twist.

6. PRE-HEAT 480°

7. Generously mist the inside of the oven with water. Ease the loaves, along with the parchment paper, onto the baking stone. Spray a little more water into the oven. Repeat after one minute.

Help! I’m falling out of bed.

8. After 5 minutes of baking, lower the heat to 210°C/410°F, then bake the loaves for another 20-30 minutes more.

Very nice crumb and taste, no bitterness.

And today’s report whipped with the whisk, right oven temps:

Right oven temps … better color!

Haven’t sliced the loaf, still too warm.  But everything looks good.

How could you resist?  Why would you want to?

Ilva:

If you want to make this bread with us and be a  Bread Baking Buddy, then bake it, blog it and send me a link by May 26th, to luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com with Bread Baking Buddy in the subject line and I will add you to the roundup. But before you do that, check out if and how the other Babes managed their whipping, on my side bar.

We have bread!  Hope you find time to bake with us.