L.O.A.F.

[shewhomust]

Yes, I made a spelt loaf. Actually half white spelt flour, half wholemeal wheat, with a handful of leftover rice thrown in at the last minute.

The information on the spelt bag said that it might rise faster than wheat flour; I didn't notice that. But what I did notice was that despite the initial mix being very dry (I thought at one point that I wouldn't be able to mix in all the flour without adding more water, but resisted temptation and was glad I had), at the end of the process it was very soft and sticky indeed. I wondered if this was a characteristic of the spelt, but the next batch of dough did the same thing, so perhaps not. In which case, what is causing it: am I giving it too long / longer than it needs given the warmer weather? Or is it just one of those mysterious variables?

I put it in the oven when it had doubled its size, but the resultant loaf was still quite dense. The texture of the rice is barely perceptible, but I think it added a subtle sourness, which is good, and I'm enjoying my morning slice of toast - which is the object of the exercise!

Yesterday I made pizza: a mixture of white, wholemeal and buckwheat flour, and generous with the olive oil. Again, it went from very dry to very sticky. And that trick they do in pizza restaurants where they take a ball of dough and turn it in their hands so that it forms a disc in mid-air? Well, the forming a disc is not a given - I produced something more like a map of Cyprus. But putting a blob on a baking tray and stretching gently worked fine; then I let it rest for maybe 20 minutes before adding the topping and baking.

The key element of the topping was beef tomatoes, sliced as thin as I could and then sprinkled with lots of chopped up fresh basil and some olive oil. In among this, salami (which was good), pepperoni (not peppery enough to be worthwhile), mozzarella, olives (black worked better than green, but we knew that really). If we hadn't been planning to share with samarcand and family, I'd have added some anchovies, because to my mind if it doesn't have anchovies it isn't really a pizza (fortunately durham_rambler and I agree on this, but hardly anyone else does). But the tomato/basil/olive oil combination seeping into the bread base was fabulous. All of summer, right there.

Only then we had to drive to Newcastle in a car smelling of warm pizza (and making sinister noises again): which was various kinds of torture, but worth it for a cheerfully sociable evening, and watching Max on the local news!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

My spelt bread comes out very dense, too, and sometimes the crust is very hard. I may need to adjust the temperature and see how that goes.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Mine was crusty, but not noticeably more than other flours. Nor, indeed, that much denser: my bread tends to density (and I like flours like rye and buckwheat which contribute to that).

[sovay]

Well, the forming a disc is not a given - I produced something more like a map of Cyprus.

I am only a little sorry it was eaten before it could be photographed.

(It sounds amazing.)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

This is dough, we're talking about: Cyprus was rolled back into a ball and reconfigured.

Watching Max on the local news

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

A two-minute item on Look North starting 7:20 into the programme. Probably only available this weekend and in the UK. Max is the boy in glasses you can see putting a helmet on, at about 8 minutes in.