June 21, 2012 - 2:57pm
100% White Spelt @ 100% Hydration
This requires a lot of kneading to create a dough with strength. It starts out as a liquid soup. 40 mins kneading by hand. A messy job!
Recipe:
- 200g white spelt
- 200g water
- 2g yeast
- 4g salt
Mixed dough:
Baked:
The final dough was easily 4 times the size mixed dough and baked with a little spring. Slightly over-proofed consequently blew some bubbles at the side.
Crumb:
A fine even crumb due to the required intensive mix and the poor gluten properties of spelt.
I challenge anyone to mimic this recipe. I'm sure you will struggle!
Michael
Over and out.
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Comments
with some good rise Michael. Don't think many folks can find white spelt so they will have to grind their own and sift it for 40 minutes before kneading for 40 minutes. Think if I make it with whole spelt we would skip the sift, up the hydration and break the KA - but it would fit in the mini oven ;-)
Very nice baking.
Thanks dabrownman, you made me chuckle :)
Michael....you are a brave man....100% hydration!
How did you manage to get the dough into a decent enough shape to bake? Curious regarding your procedure.
Looks like you were pretty successful.
Thanks for sharing.
Ian
Fine line between bravery and stupidity.
Plenty of kneading builds strength. The more the you knead the more you stretch and fold.
Method:
It's important that the yeast is added near the end of mixing. The prolonged mixing and therefore oxidation causes the yeast to bud (reproduce) and the dough will smell yeasty and will rise faster than is manageable and you'll likely end up with a pale loaf as I found when I tried this the previous day. Learning from that I did as follows:
Mixed the flour at 80% hydration and let autolyse for 20mins. Added salt and another 10% water, turned out and mixed by hand using a twin-arm action. Not until after 20mins does the dough barely start to hold together. Once enough elasticity was achieved I then added the yeast and remaining 10% water and finished the mix to make a very elastic dough.
Thanks Ian,
Michael
I like the crumb of your bread. I'll give the 100% hydration a try.
Yippee
Cheers Yippee.
If you should try this I would follow my method I outlined above in my reply to Ian.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69795/20220126-michaels-100-spelt-100-hydration-challenge
Cheers,
Yippee
Great result Michael,
Just wondering if it may not be easier to develop that gluten by first mixung the dough with hydration around 70%, then letting the dough down with the remaining water?
Best wishes
Andy
Hi Andy.
I did attempt something like this starting at 80%. This flour is very thirsty! Please see my described method above in my reply to Ian.
Although mixing at lower hydration's will develop gluten more quickly, the risk of overworking is increased as more tension is applied to the gluten. I am very wary as spelt gluten is especially sensitive so I opted to mix/knead with things on the wetter side.
Thanks,
Michael
A really remarkable job! The white spelt flour I have isn't nearly as thirsty and resistent as yours.
Can you explain the twin-arm method?
Hi Nico.
Thanks.
Twin arm method - well I'm just using my hands to pick up the dough and fold over itself. My arms work just like the artofex mixers. This dough has no elasticity whatsoever to begin with and it takes 20mins before it begins to hold together. Keep going and it gets more and more elastic at which point I can start slapping the dough a la bertinet.
Cheers,
Michael
Just getting here and LOVING the idea.
1) What difference (if any) do you think using whole-grain spelt make?
2) Oven temps & time?
Thanks for sharing, and well done!
Tony
using whole grain and some sprouts.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30210/100-whole-spelt-sourdough-100-hydration
We like this bread a lot even though we didn't follow Michael's directions to the letter. If you type in 100% Spelt in the search you will get other breads as well and compare them. It is a hard bread to get right at 100% hydration using white spelt and easier with whole spelt but still no piece of cake. It is fun to try out to see how you can do at it though. I did a 100% Kamut at 100% hydration first.
Hi Tony,
1) I think dabrownman just about covered this... Either you follow this recipe or you don't.
2) All appliances vary. Just bake it until it's done. All I can add is that the best way to cook anything is to start high and gradually decrease temperature to the optimum.
Apologies if my answers seem unhelpful.
Thanks,
Michael