Breads without using plain flour

[lovinbeingmum]

Any chance someone would have a recommendation for a cookbook including breads with healthier flours like whole wheat, rye, spelt etc instead of plain flour?

I bought the Gail cookbook because while flipping I saw spelt buns and a rye bread. Turns out those are the only two in that book....a costly mistake :/

Thanks for any help!

Have a look on the Doves website. You could print out the recipes you like and keep them in a plastic folder. link here

Dough by Richard Bertinet looks like a good buy or maybe River Cottage
Amazon link here

I have"Bread" by Eric treuille and ursula ferrigno, it has a wide range of breads, pretty much anything you can think of. Many use the standard white flour, but there are also plenty f whole meal, granary, rye etc recipes, it also has a section in the book about different types of flours and how to use them (such as mixing a proportion of wheat flour with non wheat flour to get the best rise/texture)

Why not just replace white bread flour with wholemeal and spelt? I use the same basic recipe every week, but just change the flours. Some weeks it is 50% white, 40% wholemeal, 10% Spelt, sometimes I use brown instead of white, sometimes I swap the wholemeal to 50% and the white/brown to 40% (I always run on around 10% spelt as I like the nutty flavour it imparts. Very occasionally I will do 90% white, but hardly ever 90% wholemeal as it tends to make the bread a bit heavy. You could throw some rye in, but that tends to make the dough stickier (less gluten) and that can become a problem when hand kneading.

I never get too hung up on recipes. If you know your basic, then feel free to vary it.

Me too! I generally use at least about 50-75% white and then use wholemeal or rye or spelt for the rest. Sometimes I chuck in leftover mash potatoes, or pumpkin, or carrots or courgettes. Or oats. Or sesame seeds. Or wheatgerm. Or whatever needs to be used up. You can even put rice in. That's all using a basic recipe.

The recipes on the Dove's Farm flour packets are excellent - I expect they're the same as the ones on the Dove's website JamNan linked.

Best bread book ever is the one by James Morton from Bake off. Fantastic book.

1/2 white, 1/2 whole meal works really well in our Panasonic bread maker and is accepted for school packed lunches.

Thanks all!
couldbe thanks, will get the book.
SHD Copper you two sound like really good bakers. Will use the tips. Whenever Ive tried to exchange the flours, it goes from the oven to the bin :/
james tunip will check out the doves site. That would be the easiest!
elephants acceptance in school lunches is the ultimate test!

lovin Perhaps try a little first? I think 75% white bread flour is probably quite safe. Once you get a feel of it then the world is your oyster.

Or get reliable recipes. All my bread recipes are Dan Lepard's and they always work.

Lovin, bread should never go in the bin (unless you have totally mucked up the salt content and killed the yeast). It will always be useful for something, even if only breadcrumbs. I almost always add a couple of handfuls of seeds (pumpkin, sunflower or linseed/flax, some or all) and find that is another way to vary the bread. In fact, I would hazard a guess that I have never (or hardly ever) baked the same loaf twice in two months, and I bake a loaf a week.

Just experiment, that is what I did when I was making bread. I just substituted, if there was 200g flour needed, I would do 50g oats, 20g rye, handful sesame seeds, etc and then fill up with wheat flour, and keep the amounts of liquid, oil, salt and yeast.

Quint, I just throw seeds in as an addition, not as part of the flour quantity. Do you not find that your dough goes a bit liquid by reducing the flour content? Admittedly rolled oats do take up quite a bit of liquid, like flour does, but I find they make the loaf taste a bit cardboard.

I soak the oats in boiling water first. Then just add enough liquid to work. (Apple and oats to a loaf - yum yum yum. ) But I find too much oat makes the texture go a bit squashy and stuck-to-your-gums (there must be a technical term for this?)

Yes, my handful of seeds is of course after the flour, not instead of flour content. That is what I meant, the sentence was just constructed wrong. Sorry.

Grated carrot in bread is also yum.

Grated apple in bread is great, but that does make it very wet; you have to add more flour. It is very nice with sage though.

True SHD. But since learning to bake bread the Dan Lepard way I'm no longer fazed by wet dough.

We have the book Bread Matters by Andrew Whitely and it is very good.

This recipe works well for me -- it's German.

100g barley
fat and flour for the pan
1/2 liter buttermilk
1 tbsp salt
75g molasses
1 package instant yeast (7g or 1/4 oz)
250g whole wheat flour
250g "6-grain mix" of crushed wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet and buckwheat (I use Bob's Red Mill 10-grain hot cereal mix)
100g sunflower seeds

1. Wash barley and soak overnight.

1. Prepare a 25cm loaf pan with fat and flour. Combine buttermilk, salt and molasses and heat to lukewarm. [I do this in the microwave] Mix the yeast with a bit of the mixture, then with the entire mixture.

1. Drain the barley well. Mix with flour, cereal mix and sunflower seeds. Add these ingredients into the yeast-buttermilk mixture and knead with the dough hook of an electric mixer. [I used a wooden spoon.]

1. Put the dough into the loaf pan. Do not preheat the oven. Bake at 175C (bit below 350F) for about 2 1/4 hours. [Mine was done in less than 2 hours, so watch it closely the first time. It's done when the top is golden.]

I just had a slice of walnut and red wine bread. It's lovely and easy to make and quite healthy too. I'm sure.

The only good thing about winter is having my Aga on so I can bake bread. I'm going in for sourdough this year.

This has to be the best thread I've ever started....waiting for tomorrow to get started on a fresh loaf!