Saturday 25 January 2014

'Saint Hildegards' spelt loaf - BTTFB January 2014

For the first month of the New Year Carola from Sweet and That's It
choose us Back To The Future Buddies to bake Saint Hildegard's spelt loaf, originally posted to the Bread Baking Bakes group in January 2011 by Paulchen's FoodBlog.

"Saint Hildegard von Bingen, O.S.B., also known as Saint Hildegard and Sybil of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary and polymath." (wikipedia). She lived from 1098 - 1179 and had strong ideas about healthy eating. This spelt loaf is one of her recipes.

Carola changed the recipe a bit and so did I. The combination of brown bread and raisins didn't appeal to me, so I decided to substitute the raisins by sunflower seeds. A lot of them! And since I couldn't find spelt flakes I replaced them by porridge oats.

You'll end up with a deliciously tasty, moist, seedy loaf, that stays fresh for days and makes the best toast. I love it with cheese .....

















Here's my version of the recipe (makes 1 medium sized loaf):
250 ml water
100 ml milk
200 gr oat flakes (porridge oats)
9 gr salt
150 gr whole spelt flour
150 gr white spelt flour
7 gr instant dry yeast
200 ml lukewarm milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
0,5 tbsp grapeseed oil
0,5 tbsp sugar
75 gr toasted sunflower seeds
extra sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and poppy seeds for topping the loaf

Mix 250 ml water and 100 ml milk, add oat flakes and salt and let soak for a while. Add flours and yeast. You'll have a very dry brick-like consistency now (not very sponge-like). Cover and let rest for 30 mins. Add 200 ml milk, lemon juice and sugar and mix for at least 15 mins. The dough is very wet now and I used my good old hand mixer with dough hooks for mixing. Don't be tempted to add extra flour! Finally mix in the oil and fold in the toasted sunflower seeds. Cover the bowl and let proof for 30 mins. with two or three folds every 10 mins. My dough hardly grew in size and was still very wet, more like a thick batter. Poor the dough in a bread pan covered with baking paper and sprinkle the extra seeds on top. Cover the bread pan and let rise again for about 40 mins. Again my loaf hardly rose .... In the meantime preheat the oven to 185C (fan) and bake the loaf for 15 mins. Then reduce the oven temperature to 175C (fan) and bake another 30 mins. Leave in the tin for another five mins, take out of the bread pan and let completely cool on a wire rack.



1 comment:

  1. Wow Claire, your wonderful "seedy" bread looks fantastic,what a brilliant idea!
    Thank you so much for baking along.

    ReplyDelete