Spelt Country Loaf
December 24, 2011
[8SA - 50WA] mix, bulk ferment - stretch/fold every 30 (1745-1945)
initial shaping, bench rest 20 min (1950-2010)
final shaping, fermentation 3:10 (2010-2320)
Used Dove's Wholemeal Spelt Flour along with Shipton Mill's Wholemeal and Strong White Flour and Allinson's powdered dry yeast which I used for my first few loaves.
On the first stretch and fold during the bulk fermentation the dough stretched quite well but was very wet and somewhat loose. There wasn't much growth after the first thirty minutes. This dough expanded quite a bit in volume and was incredibly airy and pillowy but that made the final shaping a bit difficult.
After a short bench rest, the dough had not drooped at all and was quite larger than normal. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to shape the dough without almost competely deflating it and left it in a covered loaf tin to rise for a final 4 hours.
Unfortunately the oven heat was quite low and couldn't be raised immediately so I baked the loaf at a low temperature after spraying with some water. There was little to no oven spring and the loaf collapsed outward slightly, as you can tell by its appearance. Total time in the oven was something like 1:20, and it formed a hard and crunchy crust that was somewhat grainy, maintaining narrow but moist section of crumb with more or less consistent structure; roughly 3mm air bubbles. The bread tasted a bit salty - I'm not sure whether that was due to the spelt flour or adding too much salt, as usually the salt doesn't feature prominently at 8g. Next time I'll be using instant yeast, as I wasn't very impressed with the rise from the Allinson's yeast.
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