Spelt & Chia Seed Sourdough

You shall not live by bread alone...

I started baking bread at 06:00 today, as I felt like a slice or two for breakfast this morning. I was half asleep when I gently loaded my first loaf into the little oven and quietly dialed up the heat setting. I pressed the start button, which immediately glowed a comforting green for all-systems-go colour, and after hearing the electronic peeping sound that indicates the oven is operating, I started to prepare for the day. The first loaf was done by 06:45 and after an hour of resting time, I had my first slice of a spelt and chia seed sourdough bread. There’s nothing quite like the smell and taste of a home cooked loaf of bread. It goes really well with my home-made butter, and if you’d like to see how to make that, you are welcome to have a look at how to do that here.

Butter is better.

Included below is the recipe for one of the loaves of bread that I baked this morning. If you decide to make (or adapt) either one of these recipe’s I’d love to hear about your experience. Before you begin, I’d highly recommend that you watch this video, as it will give you some great tips and techniques for making your sourdough bread. I also built upon the recipe supplied in this video, and it’s one of my favorites because it’s so easy to bake. Pick a day where you will be in close proximity to your kitchen for at least 3 hours, as although you won’t spend a lot of time handling the dough, you will need to stretch and fold the mixture from time to time during the first couple of hours. Baking sourdough at home is a learning process, so don’t expect your first loaf of sourdough to be picture perfect. Mine certainly aren’t perfect, but I can guarantee your bread will be absolutely delicious, and once you’ve done it a few times it’s likely that you will never buy store bought bread again. Like many things in life, your technique and skills will improve, and as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. The important thing is to have some fun and get your hands into the dough.

Spelt & Chia Seed Sourdough Bread

• 65grams of your active sourdough starter

• 250grams of bread flour (you can use all-purpose flour if you like)

• 200grams of spelt flour

• 1 teaspoon of warm honey (has to be runny honey…honey)

• 15 grams of Chia Seeds (approximately 1 tablespoon)

• 315 grams of tepid water (just warm, not hot)

• 10 grams of salt

• Rice Flour, for dusting (If you don’t have Rice Flour, ordinary all-purpose flour will do)

If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment you can use that, however doing it by hand will work just as well.

Equipment

Stand mixer or large clean bowl.

Second bowl or container (preferably glass) for proofing your dough during the first part of the bulk fermentation process.

Wooden spoon and spatula.

Banneton (If you don’t have one, just use an appropriately sized bowl).

Bowl of water to dip your fingers into. The water makes it harder for the dough to stick to your fingers when you are handling it.

Process

• Add the tepid water, sourdough starter and honey into the bowl and stir gently with spatula. Once the starter has been mixed into the water, simply add the bread and spelt flour and mix together with your wooden spoon, or your hand. You will end up with what is called a ‘shaggy dough’ and the aim is to incorporate all the water with the flour, so there are no dry bits of flour left in the bowl. The mixture will be quite sticky.

• Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or cloth and leave it alone for 60 minutes. This period of ‘resting’ time is called autolyse and is a very important step in the process.

• Once the 60 minutes is up, dip your fingers in the bowl of water and sprinkle the top of the dough with a few sprinkles of water. Don’t soak it, just a light sprinkling will do. Then add the salt and start kneading the salt through the dough with your fingers. You will continue kneading the dough for at least 5 minutes. The kneading will help build the gluten network and strengthen the dough.

• Once you have finished the kneading, it’s time to transfer the dough to your second bowl for the stretch and fold’s (S&F) and the bulk fermentation (BF) period. It’s at this point that I like to add the Chia seeds, but you can add them during the first part of the kneading if you’d prefer.

• Perform your first S&F and set a timer for 30 minutes. You will perform a total of 4 S&F’s, each with a 30 minute rest interval in between.

• Once you have done your final S&F cover your dough with a damp towel and let it rest at room temperature for a few hours. This bulk fermentation will last anywhere from 4-8 hours and is entirely dependent on the ambient temperature.

TIP - To give you an example, the average temperature on the day that I was preparing this dough was 20 deg C and it took 6 hours from the time I finished my last S&F until it was ready to shape and put in the fridge. It’s best to judge it’s readiness by how the dough looks, rather than the actual time, as there can be lots of variables that can effect the bulk fermentation time. The dough should rise to about a 70% increase, but not double in size. You are looking for bubbles starting to emerge on the top of the dough, and if you have a glass bowl you will be able to see lots of bubbles forming on the inside of the glass and on the bottom of the container.

• Once the bulk fermentation is finished, lightly flour your kneading surface and gently turn the dough onto the floured surface. Gently turn it over and tuck the sides in like you saw in the video tutorial. Then let it rest for a further 20 minutes before the final shaping. Once you have performed the final shaping, you can pop your little dough into your banneton or bowl, and after putting it inside a plastic bag, place it inside your fridge until you are ready to bake it the next day.

The following process assumes that you do not have a steam setting on your home oven, and that you don’t have a cast iron baking pot to cook your bread in. The moist steamy environment in the first 20 minutes of baking will give your sourdough a lovely, blistered crust, and stop the dough from splitting too much. I’m sure you can cook the bread without adding the steam, but I have never tried to cook it that way. I would really like to try to use an oven bag like illustrated here, but I am yet to try that method as my oven has a steam setting.

Baking

• Preheat your oven to 230deg C. Use the convection setting and not fan the forced setting on your oven. On the bottom shelf, put a baking tray and half fill it with water. There are other methods of creating steam in your oven, some people use ice cubes, other’s use a spray bottle and spray water into the oven to create the steam.

• When your oven has preheated, take your dough out of the fridge and put it on a flat baking tray lined with baking paper.

• Gently rub the surface of the dough with rice flour and score the dough with a razor or something very sharp like depicted in the video.

• Put your dough into the oven on the middle rack, and let it cook in the steam for 25 minutes.

• Carefully remove the tray with the hot water and reduce the temperature of the oven to 220 deg C and bake for another 20 minutes. It will pay to keep an eye on your loaf, as it will be cooked once the outside is a lovely golden brown.

• Once removed from the oven, let it cool on a rack for a minimum of one hour before slicing it open.

Here is a picture of spelt flour and chia seed loaf fresh from the oven. Unfortunately, I burned the top a little because I didn’t realise how much it would rise. I lowered the rack and apart from not being a particularly pretty loaf of bread I was more than happy with taste and how it turned out.

The loaf below was made from my adaptation of the recipe in the video and is absolutely scrumptious as well.

As always thank you for reading. And if you haven’t done so already, please consider subscribing, sharing, or leaving a comment. You could live on the edge and do all three!

Caio for now.