SOME SUNDAY BAKING, pt.1

Now we're going to go all domestic here and kick off the week with some baking!

Ever since Ina read "Den Hemliga kocken" (the secret chef) by Matts-Eric Nilsson she's been making all of her bread herself, to avoid all the artificial additives that industrially produces bread contains. (The book is about "the unkown cheatig with your plate"; what chemicals and other man produced products our food contains - and that's a lot but one rarely thinks about it). Since I'm a lazy biatch I haven't read it (yet); I don't really have the time for all-home made cooking, even if I would want to.

Yesterday however we had ourselves a nice soft Sunday baking and listening to old records in Ina's original 1950's kitchen, which is very small, but still very functional (and manages to just fit us both in the same time). We made some bread on spelt and rye, and here's how:

The total baking time is about two hours. Basically you can use any kinds of flour for this recipe, but I think spelt is a winner both when it comes to healthiness and taste.

1. Mix the wheat germs, linseeds and speltbrans with the oil and the honey (of course you can use syrup, too, but honey is healthier so we go for that).

2.Mix the yeast into the fingerwarm (42'C) water. When using spelt flour, the water should maybe be slightly warmer than normally. With spelt you need less yeast, so if you decide to use some other flour you can consider to take a little more yeast than in this recipe. If you use dry yeast you should mix it into the flours, but note that dry yeast contains emulsifiers so then your bread will have unnecessary artificial additives...

3. Pour the water into the mix, add the salt and stir well. If you want variation, you can also add some herbs (like oregano or fennel seed) or why not some grated raw carrot, or chopped hazelnuts.

4. Mix the rye and spelt flours. Add the flours little by little into the mix. The dough is ready when it comes easily off the brims of the bowl. Don't, anyhow, let it become too "heavy" or firm.

4. Let the dough rise under a piece of cloth for an hour in a place free from draught.

5. Turn out the dough on a well powdered table and knead it well, it's important for spelt to be well kneaded. Make either two round loaves or smaller bread rolls/buns. (I prefer making many small breads and putting the ones I will not eat right away in the freezer.) Let the bread rise again at least half an hour.

6.Put them in the oven at 200'C for 30 minutes.

If you want the bread to stay really soft for a longer time, let them cool rolled into a doubled cloth, and when you put them in bags roll the cloth around the bags and keep it over the night.

(And yes it's fun to play around with Poladroid. Even though it made the bread picture look less tasty than it is :)