When making spelt baked items, what changes should be made in the mixing procedure?
Spelt can make fantastic breads and delicious pastries. It has a very fragile gluten which means that the initial mix time (when water is first added to the flour) has to be no more than 4 minutes, 3 1/2 minutes is a good target. Mix the flour/liquid enough to get the dough to become homogenous. Once mixed you can treat the dough just like it were wheat from then on. A couple of other hints to achieve higher loaf volume: • Take 1/2 of all ingredients (including the yeast), place in bowl and mix until you produce the dough. • Cover and place in accessible spot for later use. • Within 5 to 12 hours add the remainder of all ingredients to the bowl (sponge dough), mix and proceed as normal. Spelt flour is high in complex carbohydrates and, as such, needs to have some of the complex carbohydrates reduced to simple sugars so that the yeast will have a strong food source. By setting a sponge, you are releasing the enzymes in the flour that are activated when wet, to begin the conversion proce
