Daily Archives: April 6, 2008

I’ve started experimenting with bread recipes again. What got me going was two books by Richard Bertinet: Crust and Dough. Both are amazing books complete with a DVD of Bertinet making dough for bread. Unlike how I was taught, Bertinet’s method does not use a lot of flour and instead makes the dough elastic through kneading alone. I spoke with a friend of mine who was trained as a pastry chef and she said that Bertinet’s method is very French and the way you make many French doughs, be they pastry or bread. I’ve tried a few of the recipes and they’re simply awesome. It’s money well spent. Plus, within his book he describes a variety of starters, including those started with spelt flour instead of regular flour. I tried this recently and it was a great success. In this latest recipe I opted for a variation on what I’ve been experimenting with of late with starters. Instead of a regular starter I made a sourdough starter from spelt. I then created a dough that was 40% spelt and 50% white flour and 10% semolina. The bread was fantastic. The crumb was very fine, most probably due to the spelt.

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