Making Spelt Bread on a Jerusalem Morning

Today was one of those lovely long early mornings. I woke up an hour earlier than usual, watched the sun rise until the sky was so bright that I had to put sunglasses on inside. Though I could have done a myriad of other things, the golden morning had me feeling very nostalgic about home. Wherever that may be. And so, I decided to be homey. I baked bread. Spelt bread, to be exact.

Spelt makes amazingly delicious breads and pancakes. The flour is a bit more silky with a higher protein content than other wheat substitutes. I love the stuff, and I wouldn't have known about it or how to cook with it if I hadn't had a gluten intolerance when I was living in the US.

I never wanted to jump onto the anti-gluten bandwagon, particularly since I grew up eating tons of wheat and had no trouble. Also because I [wrongly] associated the anti-wheat fiends with housewives with too much time on their hands. But for the couple years that I lived in San Francisco after moving back from China, I noticed more and more that every time I ate a few too many things that contained gluten, I'd get sick.

I proceeded to learn all about delicious wheat substitutes such as quinoa pasta, a host of breakfast cereals made from oats and rice, Bragg's soy sauce, etc etc. Eventually I was totally off gluten and feeling pretty good.

Then, I went on my honeymoon to India. We really had no choice but to eat very hot, simple foods to avoid food poisoning. I threw the gluten question out the window, and proceeded to eat naan, paranthas, and other amazing fresh breads no less than three times a day. I spent three weeks in India eating like this. Never did I have a stomach ache.

When we moved to Israel, I kept up eating glutinous foods like pasta, pretzels and pita galore. No stomach aches.

It occurred to me, maybe something's up with the wheat flour in the US. Maybe it's been overly genetically modified to incorporate too much gluten. And just about when that occurred to me, this article appeared in the Huffington Post. Apparently, the wheat flour in the US is overly genetically modified. And the modification has affected pretty much every type of wheat flour on American grocery store shelves. Not so in other countries where the phenomenon of stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth white bread never really gained traction.

Despite the fact that I can eat wheat flour here in Israel without any problem, I've learned to love spelt. Thank you Wonder Bread for introducing me to so many delicious alternatives!

Here's how to make these nutty, chewy spelt buns.

Ingredients:
5 grams yeast
warm water
pinch of sugar
500 grams stone ground spelt flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
sesame seeds
olive oil

Proof yeast in a small bowl with a pinch of sugar (I use brown sugar) and about a third cup of warm water. Mix salt and flour together in a larger bowl and set aside. When the yeast mixture has formed bubbles which should take about 5 minutes for instant yeast and up to 15 minutes for fresh yeast, add it to the flour mixture. Slowly mix with a spoon, adding additional warm or cool water to the dough until all of the flour is well incorporated and it's a bit sticky. I used about 2 cups of water total. No need to get your hands dirty kneading this (unless you want to). Set aside in a bowl covered with a moist towel in a warm place for about an hour or until the dough doubles in size. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Coat your hands with olive oil, and pull off lemon-sized pieces from the dough. Shape into a ball and place onto the baking sheet, keeping buns 2 inches away from one another. Brush the buns with egg, and sprinkle a few sesame seeds on top. Bake for 20 - 22 minutes. Let cool on a rack.

These made yummy sandwiches on our picnic lunch today :)

Ginger Muffin Caps

When one thinks of the Middle East, they probably think of things like, the heat, the sun, camels and, unfortunately, uprisings. In my experience so far, the only thing that rings true is the amount of sun. But, it's cold here! Like, colder than San Francisco this time of year. The wind whips through our valley, and whistles at our windows in the late evenings. Though the temperature isn't all that low (about 48 degrees during the day), it still is bone chilling. This I didn't expect.

So, I've shot into winter cooking mode. Our table has featured things like maple syrup roasted butternut squash, stuffed peppers, and baked potatoes. The dish that was really missing, though, was gingerbread. When I think of December, my mind immediately settles on an image of perfectly golden, moist and chewy gingerbread. When my husband requested ginger snaps yesterday, I realized I had the perfect compromise: molasses ginger chew cookies.

The grocery store is an experience in itself here, particularly because I don't speak Hebrew. I managed to find dark brown sugar, but to my chagrin, no molasses. I waltzed back home with my bags of groceries, and set into making a batch of cookies from an online recipe by Paula Deen that had great reviews. Of course, I couldn't quite follow her recipe ... I substituted out the oil for apple sauce, put half the sugar in, added a dollop of honey for some stickiness, chopped in some candied ginger, and competely skipped the whole part about rolling the dough in sugar and placing perfect balls on the baking sheet so that it "looks just like the Starbucks cookies."

What I ended up with was incredibly delicious, but really nothing resembling a cookie, except perhaps in basic shape. They're more like whoopie pies or muffin caps. Or, gingerbread in cookie form. Perhaps this is what happens when you have gingerbread on the brain when you're trying to make cookies.

 

These are actually delicious. They're a little sticky and get pleasantly glued to your fingertips as you eat them. They'd go very well with a little bit of vanilla ice cream.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tbsp honey

1 egg

3/4 cup applesauce or plain yogurt

1/4 cup chopped candied ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line some baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk the brown sugar and applesauce/yogurt together until well combined. Add the egg, and the honey.

In another bowl, sift the dry ingredients together and combine. 

Add the dry to the wet ingredients, and mix until well incorporated. Add the candied ginger. 

Spoon onto the cookie sheets with a tablespoon, make sure they're spaced at least two inches apart. This should yield about 12 large cookies. Bake for about 14 minutes, then take out to cool for a bit, and when they're cool enough to the touch, remove the cookies from the sheet and place on a wire rack.

Bon appetit!