Bread of Life

When my stomach rebelled over the protein in wheat known as gluten I felt extremely sorry for myself and spent lots of time moping about bakeries and bemoaning my lot to anyone who would listen.

I thought I would never get decent bread again.

Several years later after much experimentation, I have successfully made brownies and all manner of tray bakes gluten free as well as perfected a flatbread that works like naan bread. But loaves….not so much.

Since our arrival in Cymru I have experimented with adding spelt back into my life. Spelt is an ancient form of what with *considerably* less gluten--it has a completely different genetic structure than wheat which my tummy seems to tolerate. I still bake gluten free (as a matter of fact we had gluten free brownies last weekend) but I have been experimenting with putting spelt bread back into my life.

It started with the Lemon Poppy Seed Bread. I had this loaf pan just calling out to be used so I did a bit of research..

I found this recipe www.anjasfood4thought.com/2012/01/spelt-quick-bread.html  and since it was actually meant to be made with spelt (which having less gluten can rise less that wheat) so adapting a wheat recipe to spelt can sometimes not work quite as well)  I thought it would be safe to try.

Oh

My

Stars.

Bread is back on the menu, baby.

Spelt Oat Sunflower Bread

 Preheat your oven to 200C/400F. Lightly grease a loaf pan and then put a bit of parchment in there so you can remove it easily after baking. The oil helps the paper not to shift around when you are spooning in batter.

 First sour your milk. We are making buttermilk here to give the bread a bit of tang.

1 cup plant based milk (we used Oatly, but soya milk would also do nicely)

1 TB lemon juice

Add the lemon juice to the milk and let it curdle.

1 ½ cups wholemeal spelt flour, sifted (could use whole wheat flour)

½ cup oats

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking SODA

¼ cup sunflower seeds, divided

Mix all your dry ingredients together in a bowl  reserving 1 TB sunflower seeds.

Add  your buttermilk and stir until just combined.

Spoon into your parchment lined loaf tin and smooth the top. Sprinkle the remaining TB sunflower seeds evenly on top.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Lift out and let cool on a wire rack for as long as you can stand it before slicing it.

This was *amazing* The buttermilk really gave it a lovely sourdough feel.

We had it with a rustic potato and roasted garlic soup. We meant to eat the rest of the loaf the next day but it was sooooo freakin’ good we kept going back to nibble on it throughout the evening.

It tastes very good with jam.

 I am conscious of not overdoing spelt for fear of developing an intolerance but there was just one more type of bread I was dying to try.

Stay tuned for the Our Daily Bread.