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Daily Archives: March 18, 2020

Spelt & Wholewheat No Knead Bread

Hi there ! So if you follow me, you probably know that I work in a tiny artisanal super yummy bakery in Singapore (Microbakery&Kitchen) owned by a Singaporean friend. Being French I was born with bread, raised with baguettes and pain de campagne, and developed over the years a strong tastebud for sourdough loaves. At Micro the team bakes the best sourdough in the whole Singapore I believe, and each time I part time there I end up increasing too strongly my Gluten intake 🙂 So normally at home I tend not to bake too much bread, especially as I don’t bake sourdough (not enough time commitment for that unfortunately) and tend to avoid yeast. But once in a while I am tempted to make my own bread, probably some kind of maternal manifestation of my love for my family (yes my kids and buddy are Bread lovers !). I had made a few previous attempts at no knead breads but they were not so successful (crust to soft, or dough not airy enough…) so when I found out about the Sullivan Street bakery no Knead Bread recipe on NY Times cooking website I was again tempted to give it another trial !

Made a few adjustments to the original recipe, twisting the flour and adding some seeds/ nuts. If you are stuck at home at the moment and are in the mood for baking, go for it, you won’t need to go out to buy bread tomorrow morning 🙂 confinement recipe validated ! and you will enjoy really good tartines for brekkie with your family. This recipe is really easy and you can make it with your kids ! Just need to plan resting time of min 14 hours (ideally around 16 🙂

As always, don’t hesitate to contact me if you make this recipe and have any question or feed back. ENJOY !

INGREDIENTS

3 cups flour : 1,5 cups spelt + 1,5 cup wholewheat* (can substitute with GF flour but bread density will be different, I have tried with Bob’s redmill 1 to 1 successfully )

1,5 cup water at 25 deg C

1 medium carrot grated (for extra fibers 🙂

1/2 cup seeds or nuts (choose whatever you like, I like hazelnuts or walnuts and pumpkin seeds also work very well 🙂

2 tbsp chia seeds

Optional 1/4 cup dried apricots / raisins / cranberries and if you choose them optional spices (0,5 tsp cinnamon or 0,25 tsp cardamon)

1,5 tsp sea salt

3/4 tsp dry instant yeast

INSTRUCTIONS

The day before (afternoon if you are planning to bake next morning), whisk all dry ingredients together i a large bowl, and add the water gradually. Stir well to combine everything well.

Cover the bowl tightly and leave it to rest on your countertop at room temperature.

16 hours later minimum:
Preheat your oven at 230 deg Celsius Fan forced.

Put your pan in the oven to preheat as well. You need to use a pan that has a lid and can go in the oven. Ideally a Staub / Le Creuset / Dutch oven kind of pan. It will help getting a nice crust and moist interior.

After 30 min preheating, scrape your bread dough out of the bowl. It should have well risen and be airy. it will be sticky so use some more flour to work on your dough and shape it in a ball form. You might need quite a fairly amount of flour depending on the flour you used. It’s normal ! Add flour and shape your dough until it gets the shape of a ball and is not sticky any more.

Transfer your dough on a baking paper sheet, scar it, and top with a little nuts/seeds if you want to.

Take out your Pan out of the oven, transfer the dough with the baking paper into it, drop some water on your lid (using a spray bottle works well 🙂 and close immediately the lid, then put back your pan in the oven for 35 min.

After 35 min, open the oven, remove the lid and let the bread crust get a nice colour for approx 10/15 min (check regularly).

Once you have a nice bread loaf with a nice golden or slightly darker crust (depending on your taste), take it out and leave on a grid to rest and cool down for min 1 hour before slicing (otherwise it will get mushy).

Enjoy immediately, or keep in a bread bag for a few days, or slice and freeze to eat on demand if you leave in SG 🙂