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Homemade Organic Wholemeal Spelt Bread

Homemade Organic  Wholemeal Spelt Bread with nuts, raisins and sunflower seeds
Homemade Organic Wholemeal Spelt Bread with nuts, raisins and sunflower seeds

I started to make bread a few years ago, because I wanted to improve the quality of my feeding. After reading lots of blogs and online forums, I failed trying to make many breads and sourdough. Yet, I kept practicing with different recipes, with different organic flours, with white flour and wholemeal flour, and I got it when I discovered organic dried yeast. When you get to know how to make it, then you don´t want to buy bread anymore. I read about this many times, and I thought that it was exaggerated, but it is totally true. Now, when I eat an industrial bread at some restaurants, it hasn´t flavor, and its texture is completely different.

Just notice that you have to spend some time learning and practicing, and you need to pay attention to the process. I also warn you that your family is going to eat the bread you made in half an hour, but don´t worry, the effort is well worth it.

Even though I´m still a beginner in the art of making bread, now I´ll tell you in detail the way to make the type of bread I make well; ingredients, steps, and a video of our YouTube channel.

We need the following INGREDIENTS;

  • 12.70 ounces of wholemeal spelt flour
  • 6.35 ounces of strength spelt flour
  • 0.09 gallons or 0.66 pints of water
  • 0.42 ounces of non salted butter
  • 1 level tea spoon of salt (the World Health Organization recommends not to exceed the daily intake of 0.17 ounces of salt)
  • 1 level tea spoon of raw whole brown cane sugar (the World Health Organization recommends not to exceed the daily intake of 0.88 ounces of sugar of any kind including panela)
  • 1.76 ounces of sunflower seeds
  • 1.59 ounces of raisins
  • 1.59 ounces of small bits of nuts
  • 0.32 ounces of dried yeast to make bread

And if all these are organic products, then better for our health. Watch out for binders included in some brands of salt.

STEP by step;

1- mix only the flour and the water, cover with a cloth, and let it rest 30 min.

2- knead while adding dried yeast , and keep doing that for another 3 min., cover it with a cloth, and let it rest for 1 hour, ideally inside of the oven only with the light on.

3- mix the olive oil or the butter with the brown sugar and the salt, and let it cool to avoid killing the yeast

4- take the dough out of the oven, and we shall see that our first bread fermentation raised the dough´s size. Then knead for another 3 min. while adding oil or butter, with salt and brown sugar. Cover it with a cloth, and let it rest 35-40 min.

5- we shall see that our second bread fermentation raised the dough again. Then knead for another 3 min. while adding the sunflower seeds, raisins and nuts. Or instead, you may just stick the nuts on top of the dough. Cover it with a cloth, and let it rest 30-35 min.

6- we shall see that our third bread fermentation raised the dough once more. Now take a tray out of the oven, and heat the oven up to 392º F

Wholemeal Spelt dough after the third fermentation
Wholemeal Spelt dough after the third fermentation

7- cover the tray with baking paper and nothing else, and fold the paper to make it fit to the size of the tray

8- fill a baking dish with a full glass of water, in order to evaporate and to prevent the bread crust from hardening

9- with a plastic and flexible pastry shovel, scratch the sides of the dough, while pooring it slowly in the baking paper, trying to avoid the volume from breaking. You can shape it if you want, but you don´t need to make cuts on top of the dough, because it is not a compact dough

Dough on top of the baking paper ready for the oven
Dough on top of the baking paper, with which we cover the baking tray

10- put a piece of foil on top of the dough just like a shield to prevent the dough from burning

Otherwise, we can toast too much the bread crust, as in the picture below. You may open the oven in the middle of cooking, and you can cover the bread with foil, but you´ll loose heat opening the door of the oven.

 Homemade wholemeal spelt bread with a too much toasted bread crust
Too much toasted bread crust

11- put the baking dish in the lowest part of the oven, the tray with the dough on top of it, lower the heat at 356º F, and let it bake for 1 hour

12- take it out of the oven, and put the bread on top of a sieve or a strainer, to let humidity evaporate from the bread during 30 min.

Homemade Organic Wholemeal Spelt Bread fresh from the oven
Organic bread fresh from the oven

After half an hour it will still be warm. We can cut it to see how it looks inside. Ideally we should see small uniform gaps between the crumbs. This means that the whole bread has been cooked well, and to the touch it will be spongy when pressed.

Homemade Wholemeal Spelt Organic Bread fresh from the oven, and put on top of a strainer or sieve
Organic Bread after half an hour on top of a strainer

If we have large gaps under the bread crust, as in the following picture, then the bottom part will be more pressed and not so cooked.

Homemade Wholemeal Spelt Bread with gaps under the bread crust by ShopCanarias.es
Bread with gaps under the bread crust

Enjoy it! , and afterwards cover it with a cloth.

And try this bread with Canary Islands different tasty cheeses.

Thank you very much for the visit, and see you soon!

Canary Islands Sweet Gofio´s Recipe

Steps and video of how to make sweet Gofio ball or lump

Sweet Gofio ball or lump made by ShopCanarias.es
Sweet Gofio ball or lump made by ShopCanarias.es

I summarize in another article the advantages of Canary Islands´s Gofio, which is made with toasted and ground cereals (if you want to know more then click on the link at the end of this post). But now I will share with you how I like to make kneaded Gofio, also named Gofio ball o Gofio lump. Below you can see the ingredients which you need, and the steps to follow. And you may also see the following video of our YouTube channel.

video of how to make sweet Gofio ball or lump

We need the following INGREDIENTS ;

  • 2 table spoons of organic raisins,
  • Enough organic milk to cover the raisins, which I usually let soak in milk overnight,
  • 2 table spoons of organic peeled almonds cut in pieces,
  • 3 organic bananas from the Canary Islands, which we are going to smash,
  • 2 table spoons of organic honey,
  • and organic gofio from the Canary Islands, made with corn and wheat in this case.

STEP by step ;

1º- mix all the ingredients except the gofio, afterwards add the gofio slowly,

2º- keep adding gofio and mixing until it is too dense, then knead while adding gofio,

3º- and finally use your fists to knead until the dough doesn´t stick neither to your hands nor to the bowl.

4º- Give it the shape desired, round or like a bread loaf, and sprinkle more gofio around it.

Ready to eat for breakfast, o for lunch with a cup of Canary Islands wine, Enjoy it!

Thank you for visiting, and see you soon !

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