Bread Baking

What about wheat/spelt

Many people who are allergic to wheat can eat Dinkel without adverse effects. This is not because Dinkel contains no gluten – on the contrary. But its gluten has a basically different composition from that of wheat, with only two genomes (genetic material on the chromosome) instead of wheat's three.

general tip: It is better to use a small amount of yeast and rise the dough for a longer time. Either stir it up in the morning and leave rise all day, or stir up in the evening and bake next morning. Dinkel dough is stickier than wheat dough, a common mistake is to make the dough too dry.

Jerome's Wholemeal Wheat Bread

Mix 700 g Milmore wholemeal flour and 700 g water well in a bowl. Set aside covered for 6-12 h to let the flour soak and flavour develop. Add 200g sourdough along with 100ml of warm water to a large bowl and stir. Add 300 g organic Milmore white flour and the rested wholemeal flour to the bowl and stir. When the dough is one clean piece, start to mix, stretch, pull and fold it for a minute, rest covered for 45 min. Add 24 g salt and fold it in for 2-3 min. Transfer the mixed dough to a greased container with a loose lid to start the bulk fermentation, rest it for 30 min. Fold it over itself 2-4 times, let it rest. Repeat the folds every 30 min up to 4 times until the dough has increased in volume. Pour the dough onto a clean bench, divide into 2 pieces. Stretch and fold them (youtube 'sourdough preshaping') Dust the preshaped dough with flour and cover with a tea towel to rest for a final 30 min. Lightly dust the tops of the preshaped pieces, scrape under each piece with a spatula to flip before stretching and giving the final tension up. (Youtube 'sourdough final shape and proof').
Add each shaped piece to a floured tea towel sitting in a bowl/basket for rising.
Place in the fridge and let proof for 2-24 hours. (explore different flavours, allowing longer and shorter proof time in the fridge), heat your oven to 260°C, add the loaves from the fridge by dusting the top and flipping from the bowl/basket into the hot pan. Score some cuts into the dough before quickly adding the sealed lid back on, and bake covered for 21 min on a lower heat of 230°C. After 21 min remove the lid and bake for a further 15-20 min or until you lift the loaf and tap the bottom and hear a nice sounding drum.

Dinkel Bread

Dinkel flour can be used in exactly the same way as wheat flour – just replace the flour in any recipe with Dinkel flour. It might soak up a bit more water. Dinkel flour does not like a lot of beating, better stir the dough gently.
View our Recipe

Carol's flat Breads

2 cups of Milmore flour (I use wholemeal spelt and rye, but white is fine too), ½ teaspoon baking powder and ½ to 1 ts salt. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in 1 cup of warm water. Mix to make a soft but not sticky dough. Kneed for 5 minutes and leave covered to rest for 10 or more minutes.
Split into 8 equal balls and roll out to about 24 cm rounds - use plenty of flour to do this.
When I get to four left to roll, I put my heavy bottom pan on the stove top to heat – I use a medium heat.
Cook each bread like this: Watch the bread and when you see little air bubbles appearing in the bread turn it (takes 15-30 seconds and the bread goes a little darker), cook on the other side for the same time (it depends on your pan and your heat how long). Then flip over again and use a fish slice to push the bread onto the surface of the pan (only for about 10-15 seconds) – it should get air bubbles in it that you keep pushing down (but this depends on your flour and is not essential); turn over and do the same to the others side. Put the bread on a rack and cover with a tea towel. Repeat with the other seven breads, stacking them on top of each other under the tea towel.
The breads will stay fresh for a couple of days if sealed in a plastic bag but I put mine in the freezer while they are still warm and take them out to make in the mornings for lunches. They only take a couple of minutes to defrost on the bench.
I spread either chutney or pesto on the bread and fill with salad vegetables. They are nice with hot egg in them also. You can use them for spring roll wrappers and deep fry them, but personally I like them for lunch with salad in them.

Baking with Rye

We personally like a wheat/spelt 80% rye 20% bread very much. The bread stays longer moist and is very tasty.

Friends of ours make a 100% rye bread. It needs a bit of patience to produce: recipe for about 4 loaves
Sourdough needs to be prepared or bought.

Grind 8 cups of Milmore whole rye or mix Milmore rye flour 2/3 with 1/3 of kibbled rye, add 1½ cup sourdough, gently stir to make a moist slurry, plenty of moisture activates the dough. Place it in a warm place, leave for 6-8 hours, cover to prevent surface drying.

Optional: Put 2-400 g of seed separately (linseed, sunflower, pumpkin etc) to soak at the same time.

The slurry will have risen and be well fermented containing plenty of air bubbles.
(Take out ½ cup sourdough starter for your next bread; add to this lukewarm water and 1 cup rye flour – drier consistency this time to slow fermentation processes. Leave for a while in the warm, then place your sourdough starter in the fridge for a fortnight for use in your next bread).
To your prepared dough add another 6 cups of rye flour, add 4-6 tsp salt, add the seeds you soaked earlier; gently stir to make a moist slurry.
Gently transfer the mixture into greased bread forms. They should be half full. Place in a warm place, cover to retain moisture and leave for 2-4 hours. Heat the oven to 220 degree C. Place the bread into the oven and pour some water for moisture onto the bottom of the oven. Bake for 10 mins, then reduce the temperature to 180 degrees and bake for about 45 min more. Open the oven door, but leave the bread in the oven to gently lose heat for 10 min. Take the tins out of the oven and tip out the bread. Check if cooked by knocking underside of bread – it should sound hollow. Place on a grid to cool off, then in an earthenware bread container with small air vent on top to keep your rye bread fresh for a fortnight.

How to make Sourdough

It is not difficult to make your own sourdough and use it over and over again for bread making and bread rolls. The finished dough contains live cultures of yeast and lactic acid bacteria. To prepare sourdough only two ingredients are needed: 350 g of flour - e.g. rye or wheat and about 350 ml of lukewarm water. If wholemeal flour is used, more water may be required. The sourdough is made over a period of 3-5 days, taking advantage of spontaneous leavening. It is important that you pay attention to the cleanliness of the utensils and that the sourdough is not worked with metal, as metals (especially precious metal) have antibacterial properties and can affect the lactic acid bacteria. Also of crucial importance is the temperature, which is optimally around 30 °C to 35 °C during the resting phases. A suitable resting place for the dough batch is draft-free. Production is also possible at 20 °C, in which case fermentation simply takes longer.

1st day: stir 100 g of flour with 100 ml of lukewarm water in a jar, let it sit, covered, for 24 hours.
2nd day: add 50 g of flour and 50 ml of lukewarm water to the dough, stir and set aside, covered, for 24 hours. The yeast should begin to rise slowly. The dough should smell intensely sour and like yeast. The sour smell will decrease somewhat after a few days.
3rd day: add 100 g flour and 100 ml lukewarm water. Allow to sit for 24 hours, the smell should now go towards yeast and sour milk.
4th day: add 100 g of flour and 100 ml of water and stir. After 24 hours you have the finished leaven. The sourdough smells pleasantly sour and has a certain fruity note. If this is not the case and the dough smells more like rotten eggs, the lactic acid bacteria have lost the displacement competition and putrefactive agents have prevailed. Unfortunately, the product must be discarded.