Sourdough Wheat & Spelt Bread recipe

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I’ve been making this bread for awhile now and thought I should finally post the recipe!  I don’t remember where I got the original recipe from, this has been changed, amended and played with for about two years to end up with this very simple final version.

Sourdough Wheat and Spelt Bread

Ingredients

1 cup plain sourdough starter (that’s starter made from just flour and water)

1 cup lukewarm water

2 tspn salt

1/4 tspn baking soda

1 cup organic white plain flour

2 cups organic wholemeal spelt flour

(Proof your starter before making this, that is, mix the starter with about one cup of warm water and a cup of plain flour and leave in a warm place for 4-8 hours.  Then measure out the cup of starter and put the rest in the fridge for next time)

Method

Sift and mix together all the dry ingredients.

In a large pyrex or ceramic bowl mix the water and starter together.

Add most of the dry ingredients and mix well.  Keep adding the dry ingredients until you can’t stir with a spoon any more.  Tip the dough out onto a floured bench and knead.  Add more dry ingredients as necessary, however keep in mind that sourdough needs to be moister than ordinary yeast dough.  It should end up as moist as possible, but not sticking to your hands and the bench.  I usually don’t use all the dry ingredients, mostly I end up with a few tablespoons left.  I put any excess away and use it next time.

Knead for ten minutes.  Use a timer, you really do need to knead for the full ten minutes to get a good texture to your bread.

Scrape any loose flour out of the bowl, oil it lightly and place the dough back in.  Oil the top of the dough, cover the bowl and put in a warm place until it has doubled in size.  This could take from 2-6 hours depending on your starter and the temperature.  I keep mine in the oven with the light on – just enough warmth to help it rise.

Take the dough out, turn it onto the floured bench again and punch it down.  I then divide it into two, as I have two small loaf tins, or you can leave it as is for one large loaf.  Flatten it out so it’s about as wide as your tin, then roll the dough up and place into your oiled/buttered and floured loaf tin.  Place the edge where you rolled it on the bottom.

Cover the tin/s and place back in a warm place to rise until doubled in size again.  I’ve found this takes about the same amount of time as the first rising, sometimes a little bit faster.

Bake in a pre-heated moderate oven (mine is 170 deg Celsius) for about 40 minutes, until browned and sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove from the oven and leave in the loaf tin for about 15-20 minutes, then turn out and let cool.

This bread freezes well and will last a few days without refrigeration.  It has a strong sourdough taste and is very filling and healthy!

If anyone makes this and discovers an error in my recipe please leave a comment and let me know!

Yummy Vegan cooking!

Ok, I never thought I’d be deliberately cooking vegan.  Some dishes in my current repetoire are naturally so, however ME actually buying a complete vegan cookbook?  NEVER!

And yet I did.  This one – The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen

Totally drool-worthy!  Apart from the fact that I totally can’t stand even the smell of olives, there are very few recipes in here that don’t sound fantastic.  And since I leave the olives out all the time, unless they are the major ingredient then it’s really not going to make a difference to what I think of the recipe.

Yum, yum, yum!

Friendship cake recipe

I first had Friendship Cake when I was a teenager. I loved it! My best friend gave me a cup of the starter culture, and within a few weeks everyone in the town we lived in had made it and you couldn’t give the starter away for love nor money!

Several years later, I realised that the cake was actually a form of Sourdough, and I’d been making sourdough bread for years. I had been searching the internet for a friendship cake recipe similar to the one I had as a teenager, and finally found one. I’ve changed this one drastically from the original recipe I found, however this tastes just like I remember the one in my teenage years did.

Click here for the recipe

I’m easy to please

I could be easy to please, or I could just be rather weird… Last wednesday I bought a brand new Stock Pot. Eight litres (32 quarts) of lovely, shiny stainless steel saucepan! Wonderful! I even showed it off to our niece who was staying with us that night. “Right, lovely, uh-huh.” Well, I’m excited! I cooked up five litres of chicken stock on friday, previously I’d only been able to make around two litres at a time! Woohoo!!! It really doesn’t take much to make me happy.

I also just discovered The Essential Ingredient has a shop here in Canberra! Yay!

Sourdough Bread recipe

Here’s the first of the two recipes that I promised to post. Well, it’s the links to it anyway!

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/FrenchSourDough.htm This is the recipe for the sourdough bread I made recently. I don’t make my starter the same way though, I mix the flour and water and then sit the uncovered bowl outside for a few hours on a quiet, windless day. That puts wild yeast from the air in the bowl to start the fermentation. It turns out different every time! The only thing to watch is if there is any pink mould or discolouration develop on the starter, you MUST throw it out and start again!

I keep my starter in a jar in the fridge and feed it 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour once a week. I also use organic unbleached wholemeal flour for the starter as it has more food for the yeast organisms. If any grey watery ‘hooch’ develops on top of the starter you can either stir it back in or pour it off, it’s harmless.

I’ll post the recipe for the Minestrone in a few days!

Yummy!

Minestrone and homemade sourdough bread for dinner…. I feel so full! And the really cool thing was that the bread was in rising, and the soup was made, all by 9.45 this morning! So I had to knead the bread again, set it to rise and then bake it later, but that only took a few minutes of work. And it tasted soooooo scrumptious!!!! Soup so thick we could almost eat it with a fork…. the bread was a bit heavier than usual, but still tasted great! Yummo!!!!!

Why I like to grow my own vegies

Taco’s for dinner last night… I went to the shops and bought what I needed and then checked the receipt when I got home. $5.99 for an iceberg lettuce and $3.87 for a single tomato!!!!! This was at our local supermarket that is normally really good with prices, it wasn’t organic food or anything, although that may have been cheaper! Far out…….

White Choc and Macadamia cookies

I was given this basic recipe from a friend and then I added the white choc and macadamias to make my own version, it makes about four dozen biscuits. I LOVE white choc and macadamia cookies, but I really can’t justify paying $3 per biscuit at the shops! These taste just as good if not better than the bought ones!

Basic Recipe

Ingredients:
500g Butter (16oz)
1 cup caster sugar
5 cups Self Raising flour
1 can sweetened condensed milk

Method:
Cream butter and sugar, add milk, then slowly add flour. Mix well. Shape mixture into balls, flatten slightly with a fork and place onto a greased tray. Bake in a moderate oven for about 10 minutes until browned.

I added about 300gm white chocolate, bought in a block and just roughly cut into chunks, and 80-100gm macadamia nuts, also roughly chopped.

You can make all kinds of variations – try adding mini M&M’s, chocolate chips, sultanas, nuts or anything you fancy. If adding coconut, omit half a cup of the flour and add one cup of coconut.