Spelt loaf, Herbstzauber and raspberry cake

After rye, I think spelt is my favourite flour to work and bake with. Even though it's closely related to wheat, spelt behaves remarkably different in baking. Whenever I bake mostly white spelt loaves, I opt for a 30 minute autolyse before mixing the final dough. After the autolyse, salt, levain and yeast (if using) are quickly incorporated in the dough. The mixing times tend to be extremely short - just a couple of minutes on first speed is often all that's required. I usually do two or sometimes three folds during bulk fermentation. As the dough ferments, it tends to "sweat", and it appears to release some of the water that was first mixed into it, so well floured hands, speed and a good dough scraper are essential.

Earlier today I baked one of my very favourite spelt loaves. This is a "pain de campagne"-style loaf, slightly rustic with 20% whole spelt, and a stiff spelt levain. I usually take 15% of the total flour from the ripe spelt sourdough. Many bakers have commented that spelt tends to bake to a very dry crumb. I've never really encountered that myself, but that's perhaps because I've stuck with roughly 67 - 68% hydration for these rustic loaves. And with my spelt flours, that translates to a significantly wetter dough than an equivalent 67% wheat-based dough. In this loaf, I also included lightly toasted pine nuts - these nuts lend a complex, pleasing flavour note to all-spelt loaves.

I've tried baking these in brotforms before, but I always end up having trouble getting the loaves out in one piece when it's time to put them in the oven. No matter how well I flour the brotforms, it seems that the shaped loaves "sweat" so much, that they're bound to get stuck to them. After several disappointments, I've settled on shaping them into rectangles on top of parchment that I put on the peel. Two to three folds during bulk and a moderately tight shape contribute some strength, and make them stand up pretty well, although I'm proofing them for over an hour.

Notice how brown the crumb is - and this is merely 20% whole flour. You can also see that the crust tends to be very thin, but definitely crackly and it packs a most wonderful flavour. Pair that with some toasted pine nuts, and this is a most rewarding loaf! Both spelt flour and pine nuts are costly items in my pantry, but I usually think the flavour of these loaves justify the extra $$$. If you're looking to try something new, definitely give spelt a try. It's not just hippie-loaves, y'know!

As some of you might know, I do have a particularly weak spot for rye. There is admittedly a steep learning curve when one is approaching high ratio ryes, but the rewards are great, and once familiar with how's and why's, it's a lovely (albeit sticky) grain to work with (in my opinion). I was thrilled when Nils, whose ye olde bread blogge is a source of constant inspiration and great knowledge, posted a link to a co-op (?) called Bäko Gruppe Nord in his latest entry. Several most interesting recipes are published at their site, and a couple of them I have bookmarked as "top priority". To start off, I've baked their Herbstzauber - a 60/40 dough that's mixed with rum-soaked dried fruit.

Thinking that a substantial blend-in of fruits would bog down a whole rye dough, I opted for medium rye flour in the 60/40 dough. Here's what I got right after mixing was over:

Once again, I went for a 1 kg boule, and here's the finished loaf:

I think the oven spring was surprisingly good, in spite of all the fruit and raisins in there. I rather generously doused the dried fruit in Cuban rum, so the booze that was not absorbed by the fruit went into the final dough. Terrific! Crumb:

I had also fixed my sight plainly on one of Bo Friberg's creations; this time a cake with the humble title of "raspberry cake". Simple as that! Well, it proved to take me the better part of a day to get it all together...

Starting from the bottom, the cake is made with a disc of baked short dough (I used some pâte sucrée leftover dough from the freezer) that's slathered with raspberry jam. Then, make a genoise base and split it in two - put one part directly on top of the raspberry jam, drench in syrup and place a healthy dose of fresh raspberries on top. Pour a (most heavenly tasting) gelatine-based raspberry cream over that, and put final genoise part on top. Once the cream is chilled and set, ice with Italian buttercream and decorate! Here's a shot from roughly half way through assembly: The raspberry cream is just poured over raspberries. Quickly slide on second genoise layer and put in fridge to set.

"... you know it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine - your brand new leopard-skin pillbox hat..." Well, I'm doing the best I can ;) Below is the cake iced with the Italian buttercream. Not exactly pillbox-ed, but it'll have to do. (Need to work on corners, need to work on corners, need to work ...)

And here's how it came out in the end, with almonds pressed in on the sides, a layer of marzipan on top, and chocolate shavings in the middle: