Bread making 101: Experiments in Flour

Elaine bought a new kind of flour which is actually an old kind but its a new kind because its been re-discovered. Its supposed to be better than standard wheat flour due to low allergy possibilities.

This flour is called spelt which I thought was a kind of fish that Englishmen and other strange, European type people eat for breakfast. It appears that spelt is also a kind of wheat that people used to eat until Pillsbury needed something for that fat doughboy to market (I understand that Pillsbury has a policy that none of their advertising can involve seeing the Pillsbury doughboy from the rear nor can there be any puns on the word buns especially if it involves rear doughboy views).

So this bag of spelt has been sitting on the kitchen counter in the same place for about a week. Normally this means that Elaine has bought something that seemed a good idea at the time but now that its in the house, she's not exactly sure how to use it. Being a reader as well as a standup kitchen counter eater, I was reading the bag one evening whilst eating the oat cereal that is supposed to be healthy and tastes like it too. There was a receipe on the back for spelt bread. Best of all, it would work in a bread machine.

Inspired, I decided to make some bread especially after listening to Kevin talk about how easy it is. It took a few days before I managed to stop off at the grocery store (the Scary Kroger, if you must know, which by the way has been remodeled into "the Kroger formerly known as the Scary Kroger") but finally I had secured the yeast, 99 cents for a two pack as I suspected any larger amount would provide a poor ROI.

I pulled down the bread machine from the high cabinet, the one over the refrigerator where the less used kitchen stuff seems to congregate. I put together the ingredients, removing a tablespoon of water from the amount due to altitude. I also used sea salt rather than the plebian Morton's as I was starting to really get into this healthy food thing.

The bread machine did the kneading work quite well; things were rocking along as the bread machine danced about the kitchen counter. Then it started the bake cycle. I was in the living room and Elaine was in the kitchen. Then she called out, "The bread machine is smoking. Should it be doing that?"

I of course said that the bread machine couldn't be smoking and sauntered into the kitchen. It was smoking. Now I was in a quandry. If I unplugged it, the bread would be ruined yet matters were rapidly advancing towards fire alarm test state in the smoking bread maker department.

I bravely opened up the lid and looked inside. After a few seconds of discussion with Elaine, I decided that $2 of bread ingredients wasn't that important, so I pulled its plug. Elaine and I then talked over our going forward plan whilst I inspected the bread maker compartment.

Then I found the "smoking gun", a bit of dough had been flung out of the mixing/baking bowl and landed on the heating element. Elaine and I reviewed the situation and decided that the baking step had just started. After further discussion we decided that we could remove the mixing/baking bowl from the bread maker and institute a project recovery by baking the bread in the oven instead.

I turned on the oven to let it pre-heat. After a couple of minutes, I realized that there was smoke coming from the oven!

I opened the oven door and there was a LOT OF SMOKE. Quickly thinking, I stepped over to the back kitchen door and unlocking it, flung it open. Yes, I forgot to disarm the alarm system before doing so but since it wasn't turned on there were no repercussions.

The problem appeared to stem from something on the oven floor so I cleaned up some of it with a wet paper towel and the rest burned off. The oven finished up the pre-heat, the smoke cleared through the open kitchen door, and the fire alarm did not go off.

I put the mixing/baking bowl in the oven and let it bake. It actually turned out quite well. Very healthy tasting.

It didn't rise much but I think that had little to do with my unorthodox baking procedure and was more attributable to spelt being a low gluten flour.

Elaine made French toast out of it this morning. She made a lovely black cherry compote spiced with Amaretto liquor and it was a quite tasty breakfast.