Sourdough Bread with Spelt

In my opinion bread consists of only four ingredients: flour, water, salt and (some) yeast. I learned preparing the best dough for baking fantastic breads from the book Dough of Richard Bertinet. And this recipe for a perfect Spelt bread by using sourdough I got from Ed and Marieke. They have a fantastic website about baking bread: the Weekend Bakery.

The evening before the day I bake my bread I make a poolish by mixing flour, spelt, water and sourdough. I use a rye-based sourdough starter, which is already a half year old. I keep it in the fridge and feed it with some teaspoonfuls of rye once or twice a week, after I have used some of it for my poolish. Please check the website of Ed and Marieke for their method of making the starter.

Poolish:

- 100 g spelt flour

- 200 g wheat flour

- 300 g water

- 15 g sourdough culture

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and cover it (I always put the bowl in a transparent pedal bin liner). Let it rest at room temperature during the night.

The next morning you can start making your two loafs.

Ingredients:

-  the poolish

- 300 g wheat flour

- 80 g water

- 11 g salt

- 3 g dry yeast

Mix the poolish with the flour and the water for only a minute, just until the flour has absorbed the water. Now cover the bowl and let it rest for half an hour. After this you can add the salt and the yeast. At this point you can start showing your kneading-talents: take your dough out of the bowl and knead it for about 10 minutes. For kneading my dough I bought a tile of Chinese black stone (60 x 40 cms) and placed it on my working surface. I don't use any flour while kneading and the dough doesn't stick to the stone during this process. It needs some practice (or actually a lot of practice!). On YouTube you can find some great instruction-videos about kneading: here is my favorite (the Bertinet-method).

After the dough has become a real nice, smooth dough, put it in the bowl again, cover it and put the bowl on a rack on the warming plate. Let it rest for about 40 minutes. Then take it out and do a stretch and fold (one fold actually means four: west over east, north over south, etc.). Ed and Marieke published a fantastic video about this technique. You can find it here.

The dough goes back in the bowl again for an half hour rest. And another stretch and fold. And another half hour rest.

Now comes the tricky part. Shaping the two loafs. Again I can direct you to an instruction video for this.The video is made by the people of King Arthur Flour; the second half of the instruction is about shaping a batard (our spelt loafs). By the way: when I am shaping my loafs, I do use a little flour to prevent the dough from sticking to my working surface.

Let your two loafs proof on a well floured towel for again half an hour. Then it is time to score them (watch the video) with a razor blade. Two slashes will do.

Now you can put your loafs in the roasting oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. I have placed another tile of Chinese black stone on the floor of the roasting oven; it is a perfect (and very cheap) baking stone. Put a rack with a small backing tray above it and fill this with hot water just after you put your loafs in. Because baking bread means creating steam in your oven! After 20 minutes rearrange the loafs: turn them and change their places, so they will brown evenly. When they are gold brown, transfer them to the baking oven, on a rack, half high. Let them get ready in about 10 minutes.