30% Spelt + potato bread

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yozzause on 22 May 2017 at 07:45

I was looking at doing a loaf from Elizabeth David's  English Bread and Yeast Cookery book Potato Bread from around 19th century, I ended up having to improvise, I used wholemeal Spelt instead of wholewheatmeal @ 30% then when weighing up the 70% white flour ran out and had to add a small amount of multigrain. The potato was 13% and I also used the potato water from boiling them, with half milk for the liquid. In the book it said that this bread was particularly popular for the making of toast and that the loaf was soft ,moist and airy to which I can concur. Not quite following the book but pretty close to it and definitely one I will make again

 

 

 

 

Hi Dab and thankyou,  I  can definitely recommend this loaf for sandwiches and as a toasting loaf. In the book it says it was a firm favourites with the English in the 1800's for that purpose. Potato was sometimes used as a filler in times of flour shortages, and in the early days potato was used quite a bit by bakers  for growing their yeast cultures so most likely some potato would have made its way into the dough.

Here is the Ingredients for the loaf expressed as bakers percentages so it can be scaled to any size dough with a bit of an explanation of how to apply it for those that may not have seen the method.

, total % = 172  whatever the desired amount of dough required is divided by 172 which will give the value of 1% then apply to the formula.

white flour 67%

spelt w/m flour33%

salt 2%

dry yeast 2%

boiled potato 13%

water/milk (50/50) 55%

kind regards Derek