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Whole Emmer Sourdough Bread
With its deep red-brown color and fairly closed crumb, you wouldn’t expect this Whole Emmer Sourdough Bread to taste nutty-sweet, with no bitterness, and to feel soft and smooth in your mouth. This emmer bread is absolutely delicious, and it’s easy to make. I absolutely love it with cream cheese and fruit preserves.
Reading about emmer wheat in books and on the internet made me think an all-emmer bread might be impossible or unattractive. Numerous blogs and forums threads refer to frisbees, and bricks stuck in pans. Even Peter Reinhart wrote in his book Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor, that Emmer “…is high in protein and has excellent flavor, but it yields low quality gluten, so it isn’t a popular wheat for bread.”
I couldn’t help but take all that as a challenge, so I ordered emmer flour from Breadtopia. I figured a good place to start on my recipe was with Breadtopia founder Eric’s Whole Spelt Sourdough Bread. I made this a few months ago and loved it, and when I had applied the recipe’s ratios to making a rye bread, I ended up with the best all-rye bread I’d ever made.
In developing this emmer recipe, I tried to see if I could reduce the honey in Eric’s recipe because of how sweet emmer is on its own. Going from three tablespoons to two still yielded an attractive boule, but it was a bit flatter and I could even feel the weaker gluten formation during the stretching and folding. So in the end, I recommend staying at three tablespoons. I also increased the amount of water and starter by a little. I should note that my sourdough starter is made with all-purpose flour, so there is a small amount of non-emmer flour in the bread.
For anyone interested in learning more about emmer and other ancient grains, here is a research article from Purdue University, and a PDF presentation by the Organic Growers Research and Information-Sharing Network on the characteristics and marketing of ancient grains.
Below is the printable recipe, and beyond that a picture-guide to making this bread.
Whole Emmer Sourdough Bread
This ancient grain produces a slightly sweet bread with a delicate nutty flavor, perfect for pairing with cream cheese, butter, and jams.
Ingredients
Instructions
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Whole Emmer Sourdough Bread