When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, as the saying goes. The same principle applies to bread. When life (or your oven) gives you a bread that is dense and dry, you make bread crumbs. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
It’s Day 32 in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, and the bread of the day is 100% Sourdough Rye Bread. After reading the comments from some of the other bread bakers who were not too impressed with this bread, I decided to try something different.
I used a mixture of spelt and rye flours – mostly spelt. I’ve been wanting to try spelt for a while. The commentary in the book mentioned you could substitute spelt for the rye so that’s what I did. I used a mixture of organic spelt and organic coarse rye flour.
To begin with, I made the firm starter with a mixture of spelt flour, water and the barm (or mother starter).
The rye soaker is made with a mixture of coarse rye flour and water.
The final dough is made with additional spelt flour, the firm starter, the soaker, salt and water. I omitted the caraway seeds.
This is the final dough after fermenting for 2 – 3 hours and right before shaping.
The bread turned out really dense due to the low gluten content of both the spelt and rye flours. You can tell by the slashes that it didn’t rise very much at all. It wasn’t very photogenic either.
I liked the flavor, but it was a little bit dry. This was my first time using spelt so it was a little hard to gauge how the flour would absorb the water. This is supposed to be a 100% whole wheat bread (rye and spelt) but I think adding some higher-gluten wheat flour would improve it, but that’s just me.
This isn’t my favorite bread from the challenge for sure, but it wasn’t bad. It’s just dense and chewy; which is fine if you like that sort of thing. I prefer soft or crusty bread, but I do like some dense breads especially if they’re healthy. That way, I can justify eating them.
I won’t let this bread go to waste. I plan to use the rest of it for bread crumbs. Here you go…
The pumpernickel bread and the black bean burgers I’ll be making to go with the HBinFive Hamburger Buns (both coming up soon) use bread crumbs so this was good timing. See I told you something good would come of it!
Thanks for joining me this week in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge. I definitely plan to experiment with spelt some more but probably not with this formula. For now, it’s time to move on in the challenge.
The next bread in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge is Poilâne-Style Miche. This is the bread on the cover of the book. This one ought to be interesting.
Happy Baking!
Cathy
Urban Breadmachine says
Couldn’t you add some vital wheat gluten to give it more spring?It’s a bummer it didn’t turn out, this would combine my favorite and my husband’s favorite types of bread… Maybe then we could agree!
Cristie says
I’ve been wanting to try spelt flour so it was very interesting to see your bread today. You said that you would use it with a higher gulten flour- would the ratio be half and half?
Cathy (breadexperience) says
Hi Kristy! Yes, you could use vital wheat gluten and it would definitely help. I almost did that but wanted to go by the formula in the book since Peter Reinhart mentioned that you could substitute the spelt for the rye and make no other substitutions. However, he did say it was a dense bread so there you go.
Cathy (breadexperience) says
Cristie, I would need to experiment with the ratio of bread flour to spelt – albeit with a different formula. I’ve seen some great looking spelt breads recently so I’ll keep on trying.
Mags says
I’m not looking forward to making this one since I’ve seen others that didn’t really care for it as well.
You remind me of me with the bread crumb thingie. I have a huge bag in my freezer made up from breads that didn’t quite thrill me.
Cathy (breadexperience) says
I had a bunch of bags of bread crumbs in my freezer. Just gave most of them to the birds and squirrels recently. They loved it!
Michelle says
Hmmmm….I had no idea spelt would bake up so dense! I can see much manipulating of this recipe when I make it!
If you break up the bread into crouton size and dry it in the oven for like an hour at 250 degrees, you can store the dried bread for ever. I find I have more room in a kitchen cabinet then my freezer so dried works out better for me.
Cathy (breadexperience) says
Thanks for the bread crumb tips! That’s a good idea to dry them and keep them in the cabinet if you don’t have space in the freezer.
Rosemary & Garlic says
Sorry the spelt didn’t improve it. I think that the dough may have some function in an arts and crafts project, it felt much like playdough.
Cathy (breadexperience) says
I agree! I gave some of it to the birds and used the rest for bread crumbs.