I recently tried out this wonderful recipe for carrot spelt bread. It has a wonderful rustic texture and a nutty flavor. It made wonderful sandwiches and was nice along side dinner as well. One suggestion from the original author is to wait to eat the bread for about 4 hours as it needs time for the natural sweetness of the bread to come out. The original recipe calls for a sourdough levain but when I pulled mine out of the fridge, it had died! How sad it that. My starter was one that I’d had for years now and came from The Herb Farm (mum’s the word on how I got it). It was an amazingly active starter, so much so that it had popped the lid off it’s the container, which led to its untimely demise. I plan on starting a new one in the next week or so, so expect a post about that as well.

In the meantime, I wanted to make this bread so I altered the recipe and made a commercial yeast levain in which I added malt vinegar to speed up the souring.

This recipe also uses a soaker. If you are not familiar with using a soaker in bread, then you’ve been missing out. Soakers add a richness and dynamic to any bread that really is something wonderful. The idea behind a soaker is to take a coarse cut grain and add boiling water, then let it sit overnight. During that time enzymes are activated in the bread that add flavor and depth to the bread. This is then added at the last minute to the dough which helps improve the crumb.

So, don’t be scared off by the many components to this bread, its actually quite easy to do, it just takes a few more bowls at the beginning. Also, this recipe is in grams. If you do not have a kitchen scale then it’s time to get one as baking is not the same without it.

Corn Soaker

163 g – coarse polenta

114 g – boiling water

Sponge

235 g – unbleached bread flour

160 g – cold filtered water

small pinch – instant yeast

Spelt Levain

235 g – whole spelt flour

200 g – cold filtered water

11 g – malt vinegar

small pinch – instant yeast

23 g – unbleached bread flour

Final Dough

470 g – unbleached bread flour

268 g – carrot juice

1/8 tsp. – instant yeast

26 g – salt

92 g – pumpkin seeds

all of sponge, levain, and soaker

flour for proofing

Instructions

These steps should be done the night before…

Start by activating the yeast for the levain by placing the 23 grams of bread flour in a small prep bowl with the pinch of yeast. Stir gently then add the malt vinegar and 12 grams of the 200 grams of cold water. Stir gently and set aside.

Now make the soaker by placing the polenta in a bowl and pour the boiling water on top (no need to stir).

For the sponge, mix all of the ingredients together until well mixed. It should form a sort of wet dough.

For the levain, add the spelt flour, remaining 188 grams of water, and starter mix prepared previously in a small bowl until well mixed. It should ball up like a dough. Knead one or two times until everything seems well mixed and some surface tension can be created on the dough. Ball up and place in a clean bowl (I just washed the bowl that I mixed it all in).

Cover the soaker, sponge, and levain with plastic and leave on the counter overnight.

These steps are done several hours before you will bake the bread…

Combine the flour, carrot juice, yeast, salt, sponge, and levain in the bowl of your stand mixer using the paddle attachment until well mixed. Change to the dough hook and knead on low speed for 5-6 minutes or until the dough is to a medium consistency.

Add the soaker and pumpkin seeds and knead lightly until just incorporated.

Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and rise for two hours, folding gently at the 40 and 80 minute marks.

Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured countertop. Cut the dough into two equal pieces (or more depending on the shape you are shooting for). I then shaped each dough into a boule, which is similar to making a very large roll, pulling one part of the surface tightly around the entire outside of the dough so that you have a tight surface tension on the outside of the bread. Take tea towel and flour it heavily in the center. Place it in the medium mixing bowl so that the floured portion lines the bowl. Place the boule (seam side up) in the bowl and cover with the floured towel. Repeat the process for the other dough. Proof at room temperature for 15 minutes at room temperature then 90 minutes in the refrigerator.

In the meantime, preheat oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit with a baking stone. Thirty minutes before the dough is ready, place an ovenproof container (I use a small cast iron skillet) in the oven on a rack below the stone.

Once the dough is ready, prepare a wooden peel (or upside down cookie sheet if you don’t have a peel) with flour (I always use semolina) or corn meal. Remove the floured towel from the top of the dough, flip the peel over on top of the bowl, then flip the bowl and peel over together, causing the dough to fall lightly on the peel. Remove the bowl and flour. Gently scour the top of the dough with several slashes about 3/4 of an inch deep.

Throw some ice cubes in the preheated pan below the stone (this will cause a whole bunch of steam) and slide the dough onto the stone. Close the oven and quickly repeat with the second dough.

Bake for 10 minutes then remove the steam pan and lower the temperature of the oven to 450. Bake for another 15 – 20 minutes or until the bread looks golden brown. Turn off the oven and leave the bread for another 10 minutes with the oven door ajar.

Let cool 4 hours on a wire rack.

The next step in creating the perfect pizza is fresh mozzarella. Generally the cheese considered the ultimate cheese for pizza is Mozzarella made from buffalo milk. Now that’s buffalo and not the great American Bison. You can often find it in high end retailers or here on Amazon.

Another alternative is to ‘settle’ for a good fresh Mozzarella made from cow’s milk which is what we do. These days it can be found in most supermarkets (though its not that hard stuff you are probably used to). It is often sold floating in water in the deli section here in America. Also, Costco currently sales a great product for a good price that is hard to beat. Another option that we love it to make our own.

This recipe is a simple 30 minute recipe. I got it at cheesemaking.com, which is a great site for beginning cheese makers. This recipe is rather fail proof (though the site contains an entire page on things to watch out for) as cheese making goes. We tend to use a slower method that involves a live culture and a lot more time but it also requires some specialized equipment (cultures, PH testers, etc) so I won’t post it here. This is a lot of fun and a great activity to do with kids, though watch out, the stretching at the end is hot and needs to be done by adults!

The first step with any cheese is to get your hands on some good milk.

As in this post, I use the excellent milk from Twin Brook Creamery. I also bought some citric acid from a local brewing store (though I think many super markets carry it) or you can buy it here.

Ingredients

1 – Gallon Whole Milk

1 1/2 tsp. – Citric Acid (Diluted in 1 cup filtered water)

1/4 tablet (tsp.) – Rennet (Diluted in 1/4 cup filtered water)

1 Tbsp. – Kosher Salt (or cheese making salt) – Optional

Add citric acid to milk then slowly heat milk to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Do this slowly! Do not overheat or heat too quickly. Remove from heat and add the rennet solution. Rennet is what forms the curd, separating the curd from the whey. Cover and wait 5 minutes. Take a long knife and cut the curds into 1 inch squares.

Now it is time to cook the curd, which means heating it. Return the curd to the very low heat and slowly heat to 105 degrees.

Continue to stir slowly for several minutes. During this time the curds will shrink (lose moisture). The longer you cook the curds, the drier the end product (you want very soft cheese for Napolitano pizza!).

At this point it is time to scoop the curds from the whey (I find it gentler rather than trying to pour them all through a cheesecloth in this case). Once you’ve removed all of the curds, press and tip the curds slightly to remove any whey that has come along. If you plan on adding salt, do it now. Now add the curds to a microwave proof bowl and heat on 100% power for 1 minute (based on a 1000Mw standard microwave). Pour off any whey, knead the curds slightly like you would bread dough and return to the microwave for 30 second bursts. Continue to repeat until its 135 degrees Fahrenheit. At this point it will be very hot and ready to knead. I think for a very soft dough it should almost not be kneaded at all. The best is to just knead it enough to for a simple surface the plunge in cold water. As you can see in the picture below, it is not as smooth as the images on cheesemaking.com. That is because I haven’t have kneaded it as long. It will keep it softer and gentler on the pizza. Enjoy!