While away on holiday taking it easy by the beach, long strolls, good books and my box of bread making things, I thought I'd give spelt a bit of a go. I found your spelt bake-off thread you all contributed to a while back - http://sourdough.com/forum/topic/1049 and had a good read through all the 200 some entries, great reading thanks! Decided to use Dom's recipe for better or worse (worse as it turns out!), but I think I lost my way.
I had to use wheat wholemeal instead of spelt wholemeal, as NZ is fairly challenged when it comes to flours and I could only find one type of spelf flour - organic, white, unbleached. The dough was F A R tooooooooo wet, even tried adding in some wheat bread flour, but thought I can't possibly add anymore flour so stopped and just decided to proof it. It looked fine in the bannetton after proofing, but as soon as I tipped it out to be baked it deflated like a popped balloon!! I optimistically hoped for a brilliant oven spring, but I really was dreaming!
Oh and my friends beach house didn't have any kitchen scales so I was guesstimating measurements by the cup full, and I keep telling myself that's why it ended up so bad! But seriously that could have a lot (well something) to do with it, spelt does weigh less than bread flour so I perhaps didn't have enough in the recipe. Tra, la, la, la, la ...
So i thought I'd fess up, post photos just in case anyone else out there has had a similar experience but was too shy to say. I do feel like the worlds biggest loser as there were so many WONDERFUL photos of spelt breads on your bake-off thread, but oh well, there's nothing like experience ....... good and bad :o(
The loaf looks a little like that space ship out of Close Encounters:
and the crumb, well words escape me (f l a t bread maybe):
but at least its openish, given the height I couldn't expect much more! I did eat it, and it was pleasant enough. Couldn't exactly make a sandwich, but it did fine with a slather of butter and jam! I feel stink, but hey, I'll try again another day. Any hot tips welcome!
kc
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Yea Spelt is very different than Wheat. I make a Spelt loaf on a regular basis. The weight of a cup of Spelt Flour for me is 95 grams. A cup of Wheat Flour is 150 grams. This really points to the need of a scale. There are a couple of things that I remember when making Spelt bread. Don't add to much water, it takes noticeably less water than wheat. Don't over mix the dough as it breaks down if you mix it to much. When I make Spelt bread I'm very cautious.
Thanks for that LD. I figured it was using cups rather than weights that caused most of the problem, but then I had no idea how much more flour to add, and probably after all my "adding a bit more" the dough was way over-worked. Next time hopefully no space-ships.
It also seems that you overproofed it just a "little" bit.................. ;o)
Yeah, I think I maybe did a "little" too much of any number of things! I have just recently made a half decent spelt loaf - first attempt since this frisbee! I'd give it another whirl too!
Am only ot happy to laugh at this loaf though - it is a doozy!!
;o)