suitable for bread?

I have just send flour out to E5 bakehouse and Andy at Gingerbread Bakery has bought some; so soon we may start getting some interesting results.

Aren't there some Gails Bakery people in our co-operative; could someone post some results if they have tried the flour?

Good thinking @grahamehunter - will post here once I've picked up my flour and tried it!

Hi, how do I collect my spelt flour? Do I pick up from the farm? I live in central London

Hi, Niki

I can send it to you for about £8 up to 10Kg, you can collect it here (SG4 7BX pretty well any time), or you can pick it up if you come to the event day on the farm on 30th September

Regards

Grahame

Made my first OurField bread with a mix of the white and wholemeal flour about a month ago using a very basic recipe and with dried yeast. The flour was very soft to use and the dough rose very quickly. I think this may mean the flour is not that strong which resulted in a flatter bread, it tasted fine though. The next time I used a loaf tin which came out much better. I have also used the white flour for a pear and olive oil cake, adding raising agents - again the white flour is very good for baking. Finally I have tested the wholemeal for making rolls - it took 1.5 hours from mixing to out of the oven - again because the yeast rises very quickly and you need to cook it before the dough starts to fall. Rolls were also good, tasty - sorry no photos of the rolls.

Here are the chai muffins I made using the white spelt flour. I got lots of great feedback from them and I thought they were really tasty!
I also tried making pancakes but the batter behaved very strangely- I couldn't get perfectly round pancakes for some reason! They tasted ok but weren't what I was used to.

I've made three loaves so far (100% white, 100% wholemeal and 50/50), but all in my bread machine as that is how I make 80% of my bread at home. I failed to take pictures of the pure white and wholemeal before eating them all up but below is the 50/50 mix. It's a little denser than standard wheat, and as you can see didn't fully rise and has a bit of a dip in the top, but it tastes very good.

I would say the white is probably the best for bread making. It was almost full size in my first test but I will make more, as well as mixing the wholemeal with standard wheat, and report back.

Spelt bread blend

I have found I can get the Spelt flour to perform acceptably if I blend it with any strong Canadian wheat flour. The mix I used in the loaf pictured was
* 50% strong white flour,

* 10% Spelt wholemeal flour,
* 40% Spelt white flour,

using only my usual sourdough levain (no commercial yeast), and 70% hydration.
PS I have found that tap water definitely effects the starter adversely, perhaps because of the residual traces of chlorine, so I only use bottled or rain water)

loaf out of the oven
loaf cut in half

Spelt flour for members

We have now sent out 50 bags of the Spelt to 2017 members free of charge , and 33 bags have been purchased at £3 /bag. Shipping costs are extra.
There remain about 40 bags for distribution to those attending the 30th September gathering.
if anyone wishes flour, and is not attending the meeting, I can send it in the next days, if you send me the delivery address, phone number etc. to [email protected]