Spelt Bread

Mr VST has been quite bored since having his laser eye surgery as he hasn't been able to the things he usually does to entertain himself like sports, web browsing and watching TV. I have been trying to set him tasks to keep him busy and decided to give him the task of perfecting the spelt bread recipe. When we were staying with friends last week we had toast made from home made bread which was delicious. It had been made in a bread maker with a mix of granary flour and white flour and it made me think about my heavy sticky but tasty spelt bread. I got Mr VST to make it replacing 200g of the spelt flour with strong white bread flour instead. The original recipe is here.

The result was great. A much lighter, but still sticky and tasty loaf. You don't have to let it rise but we did, using the hot water bottle method!

We took some slices of the finished product on our picnic today. It went really well with cheese mmmmm!

Spelt bread - third time lucky

This is the third time I've made this spelt bread. I've made it slightly differently each time and each time it has tasted better. Today I put all the seeds in that are in the recipe (I'd only made plain spelt bread before), I also allowed it to rise for a couple of hours before baking and this definitely made it lighter. It is a real tasty, nutty loaf. It was very light to eat but very doughy when I cut it open. I'll see what its like tomorrow.

Any one had any experience with spelt bread? Any tips?

***It certainly did cut better this morning, still quite sticky though

Red lentil, chick pea and chilli soup

I made this for lunch today and am still full up so won't be cooking supper tonight. It was a nice soup. I'm never sure about blending lentils, they always seem to go bitty to me. Might not blend it up next time. Second time of making the spelt bread was more successful though. The tin was well greased and the bread came out easily!

Sweet potato and chilli soup with home made spelt bread

Two new recipes tonight. The one for spelt bread was printed off ages ago and never got around to making.

I also got a bit over-enthusiastic on the sweet potato buying last week as they were on special offer at my local market stall. I found this recipe for sweet potato and chilli soup on the BBC Good Food site to go with my bread.

I made a schoolgirl error with the bread in that I didn't grease the loaf tin well enough. The three minute preparation was very easy. I didn't have all the seeds but made a plain loaf instead. The problems came when I tried to turn the loaf out before putting it back into the oven for the last 5-10 minutes. I destroyed it getting it out of the tin and patched it together before putting it back into the oven. It came out a bit hard on the outside and doughy on the inside but that might be because I didn't make adjustments for my fan assisted oven. It was still tasty though and went well with the soup and mature cheddar.

The soup was really more like a sweet potato purée. Mr VST likes it this way but I think I would add more stock if I made it again to make it a bit thinner. I made it with chilli flakes and it had a nice kick. Good for a chilli Autumn evening.