Spelt Bread

Mmmm...fresh bread. Warm and sweet and cozy. I don't want to give it up when I'm pressed for time, so I turn to my bread machine. I know that, for bread snobs, a bread machine is the stuff nightmares are made of. Yet I beg it's reverence as a tool that busy people can use to keep homemade bread consistently available. Whatever you do, though, please try and bake it in your oven. There is (In my humble opinion) something scary about the dice-shaped loaf that emerges from "the machine". So when I don't have time to make bread the old-fashioned way, I use the dough cycle on my bread machine and at least bake it the old-fashioned way! Then I have the best of all worlds: time for homemade bread, a house that smells like heaven, and lovely, burnished brown loaves that are the proper shape for slicing into sandwiches.

Here's my favorite recipe for the bread machine:

Spelt and Whole Wheat Bread

1/2 c + 1 T water

1/2 c soy yogurt or 1/2 t vinegar mixed into 1/2 c non-dairy milk and left to curdle for a few minutes

1 T olive (or other) oil

1 T "butter" or coconut oil

2 1/4 c spelt flour

3/4 c whole wheat flour

2 T dark brown sugar

1 T + 1 t gluten flour (for best texture)

1 1/2 t salt

2 1/2 t yeast

Place in bread machine according to manufacturer's instructions. Set to dough cycle. During the cycle, check and see if you need to add a touch of water if the dough is crumbly, or a little flour if it's very wet. When cycle ends, press the air out of the dough. Form it into a loaf and pinch the seams. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Let the dough rise for about 45 m. in a well-oiled loaf pan (it should slope gently just over the top of the pan when it's ready to bake). Bake for 35 m. When it's done, it should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool until warm and devour, preferably with tasty jam.

I like to use white whole wheat flour for my bread baking. It's available from King Arthur Flour Co. and Bob's Red Mill.