I love the bread I’ve been making since taking a terrific one-day class in sourdough with Sharon O’Leary at King Arthur Flour’s Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vermont (www.kingarthurflour.com/baking/). That and buying my second copy (the first was lost or stolen before I ever even opened it) of Jeffrey Hamelman’s totally authoritative Bread.
Oh, and having a handy link to King Arthur’s on-line baking classes to answer almost any question I might come up with. And probably I should also credit the sourdough starter I brought home from Norwich at the end of the class.
This week I’ve had even more of a love affair with bread since I started using einkorn flour and soaked einkorn wheat berries from Eli Rogosa who grows einkorn, a very ancient wheat (Triticum monococcum), along with emmer (T. monococcum), almost as old as einkorn, and a wheat called Red Lamas that is said to be the first wheat grown in Massachusetts, along with many other heritage varieties—all produced in fields in Colrain, Massachusetts, or Canaan, Maine, and milled practically on site (learn more at www.growseed.org) . Eli is ultra-passionate about the wheats she grows and is not alone in her conviction that one big factor in the gluten controversy is the way modern, post 1950s wheat varieties have evolved with different and more challenging gluten structures than older varieties.
The important part for me, however, was how this einkorn flour would perform and I will say unequivocally it performed very well, creating a dense structure and a very fine delicately sweet flavor with the fresh taste of wheat. I used a sourdough starter built with all-purpose flour, to which I added 3 cups more of all-purpose flour plus about ¾ cup of rye flour and 2 cups of einkorn. With next week’s batch, I intend to make the einkorn predominant.
Soaked einkorn berries add to the bread’s goodness.
A slick of good butter or a glug of olive oil and I’m in heaven.
3 Comments
Nancy, look in the guest room for the bread book you are missing. I think I left it there instead of bringing it down stairs and putting it in the kitchen. I am also so sorry to have missed the opportunity to taste your bread. Reading about it makes me yearn for it. I must try making it myself.
Hope to see you soon. Hope the bread book is where I think it might be.
Hello, I love The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook. I bought it four years ago and use it regularly. Love it. I have a problem, however, with the “Fennel and sesame bread from cyprus.” Is it possible there is a typo in the ingredients? 3/4 cup water for 5 cups of flour? It just didn’t work. I added water until I had something I could work with, but just wondering if there is a correction for this recipe.
Thank you very much!
Janice LaDuke
Black Cat Books
Lennoxville, Québec
Thanks for your comment, Janice. It does seem like very little water but I wouldn’t dare say anything until I check the recipe once again. It’s possible that the real problem is too much flour, but I’ll let you know what I find out.
And next time I drive up to Montreal, I’ll stop off to see Black Cat Books.
Nancy Jenkins