A quite delicious “new” bread for eating with cheese and toasted for breakfast with honey and fruit jams. Also excellent with plenty of butter for tea.

A couple of months ago I posted some notes on an excellent bread recipe I had worked out that tastes very nice and complex, is easy to make and coincidentally, while not entirely gluten free, is digestible by many people with a gluten (or rather Fodmap) intolerance.  Check this link for the recipe and some background information … https://sparroworks.ca/real-bread-for-people-who-like-real-food/

This bread is derived from a recipe shared with me by my bread-guru friend, Emily Meseck so it is hardly a brilliant new invention of my own … however, in line with the theme of trying to reduce Fodmaps by overnight fermentation while maintaining or increasing taste some experimentation and tweaking has taken place and, for what it’s worth, here is an easy version of the bread that you might care to try. If Fodmaps are not of concern and/or if you don’t have sourdough in your kitchen you can easily make this using yeast as the rising agent and adding a bit more water to replace that which otherwise would be incorporated as part of the sourdough.

The recipe is about proportions – hence measurements are in cups but you can use what you want so long as you are consistent. Buckets would be ambitious for a first attempt.

  • 1 cup Buckwheat flour
  • 2.5 cups of White Spelt flour
  • 0.5 cup of Oat flour
  • 1 cup of dried cranberries or sour cherries
  • 1.5 cups of sourdough
  • “About” 450 ml water
  • Salt

(note: the buckwheat is important and the oat flour adds interesting flavour but the oat and spelt flours could be replaced by ordinary wheat flour if you want or don’t have or can’t source the “fancy” flours)

Mix the dry ingredients, add the sourdough and mix with a dough hook in whatever device you have to hand for mixing

Add water gradually – you are aiming to get a quite wet but not too sticky dough that does not adhere to the side of the mixing bowl. It wants to be a bit wetter than for regular bread. The amount of water shown above is guidance rather than gospel.

Assuming you are using sourdough and want to reduce the natural level of Fodmaps cover the bowl with cling-film and leave to rise overnight – about 10-12 hours. (If using yeast just rise and treat as you would any other yeast bread from here on – you certainly won’t be using the overnight stage!).

Grease a good sized bread tin and flour it well. I recommend using a tin as the dough is wet and if you try to make a “boule” or cob it will spread and be rather flatter than you might intend.  Put the knocked-back dough in the tin and place somewhere warm for 1.5 to 2 hours until the dough has risen to about double its volume. If the kitchen is cool place the tin in an insulated container (the sort of thing you put the beer in for picnics) with a jug of hot water and close the lid. As this is a very low gluten recipe the size of the loaf as it goes into the oven is pretty much the size it will come out – there is not much ‘oven spring’ going to happen here.

Bake at 400F for 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 375F for 20 minutes.

Remove, take out of the tin, allow to cool on a rack and then eat. You will find that this loaf has good thick crust and a nice “holey” crump to hold the butter. Slice thickly for very fine toast.

** Thanks, Emily, for the inspiration

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