Category: Breads

I’ve been making Einkorn sourdough bread for quite a while now, but I decided there must be an easier way to make it than mixing, folding, letting it rise, folding, shaping, letting it rise again….. And guess what, there is!

Now I take Betty out of the fridge the day before and let her warm up. Betty’s my starter, named after a very old friend whose nickname was Bubbles. So named because she was a tiny little thing with ENORMOUS boobs. So when my starter started bubbling, I thought of Bubbles, who’s real name was Betty…..but I digress.

Anyway, I let Betty warm up for a while, feed her, and let her rest on her laurels all day.

The next morning I mix up my dough, no kneading required. I let it rise all day in a covered casserole dish until it’s doubled in size, then I transfer it to a second dish the same size that’s been heated in the oven. That’s it. No kneading, no second rise, and I can’t tell the difference in the taste or texture. Oh sure, you can shape a loaf, put slashes in the top, dust it with flour, make it look like it came from a bakery, and it will be pretty but won’t taste any better. So why work harder just to make it pretty. I’m not going to.

It does take a LONG time to rise, so you’ll have to start first thing in the morning to have bread by dinner time, but you don’t have to make much effort. I’ve amended my einkorn bread recipe if you want to check out the way a really lazy person makes it.

 

Not this girl! A couple more years, I’ll retire, then maybe I’ll have time to cook more. Or maybe I’ll find better things to do and just eat out. Or cultivate a taste for Hungry Man TV dinners. Who knows?

But cousin Kathy & I were talking about bread the other day. And you can’t talk about bread without wanting to wallow in the yeasty smell of it baking, then eating it hot out of the oven slathered with butter. And it doesn’t make itself. (Like all those incorrect sentences beginning with conjunctions? My trademark!). BUT, I digress.

Anyway, I decided to make one of my favorite breads, that has the added benefit of being easy to make and quick to rise, Italian Parmesan Loaves.

We had these with chicken and homemade noodles, because sometimes you just can’t get enough white flour in your diet I guess. I’m not going to apologize. Look at these babies and tell me you don’t want one…or two!

OK, I think I’ve finally made enough loaves of einkorn bread that I can tell you how to do it. Funny thing is, I’ve looked a lot of recipes and watched a lot of videos, and everybody does something different. So I have no idea who’s the expert here, but my bread is coming out the same every time, and it’s pretty darn good, so I’ll stick with it.

I had no success making bread without a starter. It was kind of dry and crumbly. So I decided to make a sourdough starter. It wasn’t as easy as making a starter from typical wheat flour. I read posts, watched videos, and my first effort really fell flat.

So I decided to just wing it, and finally ended up with a starter, which I named Betty. Apparently, it’s customary to name your starter, and who am I to buck tradition? So here’s the story:

I knew this teen, tiny, skinny little Italian lady named Betty, and Betty had the most enormous boobs you ever saw. My mom said in high school her nickname was “Bubbles”, for obvious reasons. So when my starter finally started bubbling, I thought of Betty. She must like the name, because so far she hasn’t let me down.

Anyway, first you need to get a starter going, so here’s the link to how I finally managed to make an Einkorn starter.

Once you get the starter going, here’s my recipe for making Einkorn Sourdough Bread.

Getting the starter going is a pain in the butt, but once you get past that hurdle, making the bread is really easy. Just mix up the dough before you go to bed, bake it in the morning. Couldn’t be much simpler.

 

 

 

I’m so excited! I just made my first good loaf of einkorn bread. And let me tell you, it was tough figuring it out. I bought two cookbooks, watched a bunch of videos, & searched the internet.

The first few loaves made using just instant yeast were dense, and sort of dry and crumbly. Not awful, but not my idea of good bread. So I decided to try making a sourdough starter. My first two attempts were a bust. So I bought a proofing oven and decided to give it one more try.

I got no bubbles. It dried out on top. The recipe I found just seemed way too dry. So I added more water, covered the top of my jar with damp cheesecloth, raised the temperature up to 78%, and added a pan of water for extra humidity. On day six I pulled out my jar of starter, ready to dump it down the drain, and hazzah! It was alive!!! I made my first loaf and it’s pretty darn good. I probably have a lot to learn but I’m off to a good start.

So what’s einkorn wheat? And why bother?

I first got interested in einkorn when my friend Jeanne decided she couldn’t eat wheat. I was curious to know if it was gluten she couldn’t eat, or just our modern wheat, so I got a cookbook and made her some banana bread with einkorn flour. She found she could eat that with no problem. So I began learning more about einkorn, and how it’s different from the wheat we’re used to eating.

Einkorn wheat is the only ancient, original form of wheat we have left on the planet, the only form of wheat that hasn’t been hybridized. The rest of the wheat we eat has been selectively bread & genetically manipulated to produce more and larger wheat berries. That makes it much more profitable, but has drastically changed the nature of wheat.

The problem is that man evolved to be able to process the ancient wheat, but isn’t doing so well with the new modified versions. Many people who think they are gluten intolerant are really modified wheat intolerant, and can eat einkorn wheat with no problems. An estimated 6-8% of the population falls into this category.

Einkorn wheat has a very simple structure, with only two sets of chromosomes. Hybridized wheats are much more complex. I would image that is a large part of why einkorn is so much easier to digest. And, when you use a sourdough starter, it makes the bread even more digestible.

From the 1940s to 1960s, higher producing types of wheat were developed to feed a growing population by cross breeding and crude genetic manipulation. The result is today’s wheat that is really inferior in many respects.

Modern wheat has 19-28% lower levels of Zinc,  Copper, Iron, Magnesium & Selenium. Modern wheat has a much higher level of gluten, which makes it harder to digest for people with gluten sensitivity. Einkorn wheat has 3-4 times more antioxidants, particularly lutein & zeaxanthin, which may help prevent macular degeneration. Modern wheat is exposed to high doses of gamma and microwave radiation to make it more disease resistant, but doctors are concerned that this may create carcinogens and toxic chemicals. Einkorn wheat is being grown primarily in Italy, and without the use of pesticides. Most of the wheat we eat has been bleached, which lowers it’s nutritional value even more. At least, buy flour that hasn’t been bleached!

If you want to try einkorn, Amazon is probably your best source. It isn’t cheap, but seems like it might be worth it. Demand is growing, so hopefully production will also increase. Fingers crossed.

It’s a lot different making bread with einkhorn wheat. It doesn’t absorb water as much as our modern wheat, so you need to make dough that’s really wet. With less gluten, it doesn’t rise like modern wheat, but I’ve found it does well if you make your own sourdough starter. It also doesn’t like to be kneaded. Modern wheat requires kneading to develop the gluten. Einkorn just gets tough if you knead it. So there’s a real learning curve but I’m determined to master it. When I do, I’ll pass it along. In the meantime, let’s go taste that bread again. Yum!

 

 

My daughter-in-law Angela has pretty well mastered sourdough bread making. (Or so I’ve heard.) I keep hearing how good it is, but I haven’t even gotten a sample yet, so I have a starter going and I’ll be giving it a whirl shortly. But while sourdough bread is still a questionable adventure, what I do have nailed down is making foccacia.

Now, my Noni made a similar version she called figasa, which were little log shaped pieces of dough fried in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. They were more fantastic than you can imagine, and I haven’t been able to make them nearly as good as she could. But since I can make awesome foccacia, which is the more commonly known Italian bread, I’ll pass it along. Just in case Angela gets tired of making sourdough and wants to go Italian.

 

OMG! That’s what I say every time I eat these. Oh yeah, they’re that good. Making bready things is sometimes a crap shoot for me. Sometimes things turn out great. Sometimes not so much. I’m hardly a champion bread maker. But these babies never fail, for which I’m sooooo grateful!

The dough handles like magic. It always amazes me. The pretzels are slightly sweet and fluffy, like one of those mall pretzels we all know and love. You can make them plain with butter and a little salt (my favorite). You can have yours coated in cinnamon & sugar (my son’s favorite). Or you can have them smothered in garlic butter and Parmesan cheese (maybe that’s my favorite) Hmmm……love me some pretzels in any way, shape or form!