So I found this wholegrain spelt flour with 17% protein. I thought holy shit, this has got to be a game changer..
I went with 500g flour, 430g water, 100g starter, 12g salt. Usual method of 6 coil folds at 30min intervals, cold proof overnight, fermented until dough sample doubled in size. Baked at 230° for 30min with steam, 200° without steam.
Result: the flattest, saddest bread I've ever made. The first time I used spelt I had similar results – at the time I thought I had messed something up but this time I'm pretty convinced the flour is the problem.
Has anyone else used spelt and if you have, have you had better results?
by Radioheadfan89
25 Comments
I am learning so have no idea at all but feel this, didn’t appreciate how much flour can have an impact until i used 1/4 spelt. 🙄
Such a shame as it’s meant to be great for cholesterol etc!
There are quite a few posts about spelt here. Search for them.
Most do NOT do 100% spelt, and certainly not to start. Whole grains have a different set of issues. How long did you autolyse? How gentle were you with your folds and shaping? Gluten development is totally different to AP/bread flour/WW.
Well yeah.. spelt won’t spring the same way a hard red wheat or white flour would. That’s not its purpose
You might wanna try a recipe like for a rye bread with lots of seeds
Next time only add 30% to a white base and if it still collapses, use a bread tin. Spelt is great for flavor, not great for structure,
Spelt is high in protein but low in gluten—go figure. You can get way with 10-20% Spelt for flavour. Or just enjoy the deep, ancient flavour of your flat bread.
86+% hydration?
I use up to 20% organic spelt from Oak Manor Mills as a ‘white’ flour. I have made a 20/30/50 spelt/rye/whole grain that gets fantastic results. I also back off about 2.5% hydration for each 5% of spelt. You’re recipe looks OK and I’d expect a lot more rise/spring than that. Was it fairly freshly filled?
Spelt is one of my favorite flours to use, but I typically only do about 20% spelt. I have also done a couple 100% spelt breads and there was nothing wrong with them.
I’ve done 100% spelt but always in a bread tin. That way it holds its shape. Hope it helps!
100% spelt is for pita-style quick breads or fry breads. Alternatively crackers or cookies. Spelt is very low in gluten, treat it like non-glutionous rice flour
Running right into a loaf of 100% spelt is a brave chioice.
It actually looks very nice inside, would eat.
I tend to try new flours in small amounts in a typical loaf. You also might need to modify hydration.
sliced thin and toasted with garlic butter and fresh parmesan would probably make awesome crostini’s
One thing you need to know, when it comes to alternative (heirloom, heritage, landrace, ancient) grains, protein does not equal gluten.
In most bread making contexts, when people talk about protein they are talking about gluten-forming proteins. When you get into specialty grains that are traditionally used in contexts *other* than bread making such as spelt, emmer (aka, farro), etc, protein doesn’t mean gluten-forming protein, it just means protein.
For example, here is the description of [White Sonora](https://breadtopia.com/store/white-sonora-wheat-berries/) on Breadtopia:
>While relatively high in protein content (12.73%), it is low in gluten forming proteins. This characterizes it as a “soft” wheat.
In the case of spelt, it is particularly confusing because you will read that spelt actually *is* high in “gluten-forming protein” all things considered. Well, there’s another layer of complication here. Gluten is composed of two proteins that contribute to the mesh: gliadin and glutenin. Glutenin is the component that is responsible for elasticity, the property of resisting changes and returning to original shape when deformed. Gliadin is responsible for extensibility, the ability to stretch without tearing. If you look at the kind of gluten that spelt forms, it has a high ratio of gliadin to glutenin, meaning that it will stretch and stretch without tearing, but it will not hold much tension.
Now then, let’s look at the bread that you’re so disappointed with. Look at the crumb in particular. You have a fairly uniform crumb. I wouldn’t call it open, but it’s only dense in the middle section near your fingertips. The rest is fairly consistent and there are identifiable cells there. Also, crucially, those alveoli go right into the bottom crust, you can see open bits right up to the border of the bread all around. This means you did a pretty good job of bulking and proofing.
How does it taste? What’s the texture? Is the crumb gummy? How is the crust? I bet this bread tastes pretty good, it probably could have proofed a bit longer even, and it looks like you got bulk fairly close. You no doubt freaked out when it was proofing because it looked slack and you jumped the gun and baked it earlier than you otherwise would have, which accounts for why the crumb is not as open as it could be. This actually contributes to the flatness, you probably could’ve gotten a bit more height, though not much.
This is, by the way, what ancient loaves looked like. If you go back to ancient Rome, and even many of the old world bakeries throughout Europe today, they actually make loaves out of fairly weak grains that look exactly like this (though with a bit more open crumb, they are very flat like this). Assuming I’m right about the flavor, the way to use this bread is to cut it into squares or rectangles (when looking at the loaf from above) and then split it like a bun, and make sandwiches with it that way.
In the future, if you want a 100% spelt loaf with more height that you can slice crossways, then just use a loaf pan. But you might find if you change the way you slice it, this is fine.
I still struggle with spelt but the falvour is just so lovely it’s hard to put down. I actually use spelt for my all purpose baking – pancakes and scones are great.
My guess would be that you used too much water. I only bake with spelt and rye, and found that around 300g water works well for 500g flour / 100g starter. If you want to incorporate more water, you could also mix in a roux. I usually cook 150g water with 30g spelt flour and add it to 470g flour along with 200g water. Wholegrain spelt can also be a bit difficult to work with if you don’t mix it with fine spelt. I usually prefer something like 100-250g wholegrain in a 500g loaf and get a much better oven spring when not using more than 50% wholegrain spelt or rye (so something like 150g wholegrain spelt, 100g rye and 250g fine spelt).
As a rule of thumb: keep at least 50% wheat and you’re good. I love to mix spelt but never more than half of total grams flour
I personally do 35% spelt whole wheat, and the rest strong bread flour. Makes good loaves! But yeah, 100% is not going to produce tall loaves…
You can search Spelt on this sub and find the couple users and photos showing successful 50-100% spelt loaves.
Someone else already explained the difference in gluten function in ancient grains, so no need to cover that.
Adding just 20% spelt to my regular recipe made the dough handle so very differently that I am not sure I would try 100% 😀 The one shop in my area, that is a fair drive away is $2/lb for bulk spelt. Not sure I will buy it again based on accessibility and limited amount in an open access bucket. I’d rather spend the time and money per lb going to Cairnspring Mills for some of their unique flours! But that is just me. If I could get a 5-10lb bag of spelt somewhere I would probably buy it and play with it more because I really like the flavor.
So a high protein content is great, but with these ancient grains it’s not “modern gluten,” it’s a different complex of proteins that doesn’t give you great gluten strength. My understanding is that back in the day – like when people were cultivating and using spelt to make bread, and we are talking Bronze Age now – an average loaf of bread might actually look very much like the picture you posted.
I’m an einkorn guy, for flavor and nutrition, but I stick to about 10% of the total flour makeup of the loaf. Much more than that and I run into two problems: it tends to clump and be difficult to mix properly, and my loaves start to look like yours.
[Here’s a recipe](https://www.theperfectloaf.com/einkorn-miche/) that goes 50% einkorn and still manages to get some dome, although mine has never been quite as nice as the pictured one. You’ll notice he uses King Arthur Bread Flour, the steel beams of sourdough breadmaking.
I’m assured that spelt isn’t quite as floppy as einkorn and that a lot of people get a decent rise with just a little bit of KA BF added in. You might start at 15%, go up as high as 25%, see how it goes. Make sure you don’t overferment; you might want to start your cold proof about 30-45 minutes before doubling, because you’ll still be fermentolysing for that long in the fridge as the center of the loaf cools.
That’s actually pretty good bread for 1700’s
Every one of my “failed” breads have made wonderful croques/toasties/grilled cheeses/crostinis
I bake 100% spelt all the time. Not sure if European spelt is better and different quality than where you are, but I love it. It definitely is trickier to work with than wheat but absolutely doable.
I use a bit of orange juice (4%) because the vitamin c helps with dough strength. I use 60-70 percent hydration and ferment shorter than I would with wheat. Also, mix by hand or just very short with a machine. Spelt is very easy to overwork which destroys the gluten.
You gotta get used to how sticky and not super stable it is on the bench. Use a Dutch oven to bake if you can.
Also you probably don’t want to go with 100% whole wheat, especially if it’s coarse. I usually use spelt bread flour mainly and maybe 30% of that will be substituted by whole wheat spelt for the taste.
Here’s my recent loaf.
https://preview.redd.it/rcccgondk64f1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32cfb46389ebeb708ea9c1280ad1f129a424109b
Looks like a savory biscotti, toast it crispy and dip it in a soup or beef & barley stew
My weekly go to is 50% bread flour and 50% whole spelt at 78% hydration. It has very good spring! Maybe dial it back and then work your way back up. I’ve never done 100% spelt but I have done 75% without a problem.