Baking Einkorn Bread
I recently ground some ancient einkorn grain and made some flour for baking. I first made tortillas, which were excellent. Then I got carried away… 🙂
We loved the nutritious einkorn tortillas so much, I went on to make pitas, bread, and cherry cobbler. I’m going to share my pictures and recipe for the bread first and then I’ll get to sharing the tortillas and pitas as soon as I can. But first I’ll tell you about the bread…and then pitas and finally tortillas! The full einkorn bread recipe is posted under the recipe section.
(Note: if you’re looking for the einkorn sourdough bread recipe, you’ll want to go here.)
Einkorn grinds into such a light and soft flour, I was afraid it would plug up my All Grain mill. However, even with my mill on the finest setting, it milled out flour just fine. However, for the bread, tortillas and pitas, I decided to move the setting 3/4 fine. Next time, I will try an even finer setting.
After 45 minutes or so of grinding the einkorn wheat grains in my mill, I had enough einkorn flour to make the tortillas, bread, pitas, and a little extra for cobbler.
To make bread, I put 3 Cups of hot tap water and 5 Cups of einkorn flour into my Bosch and mixed them until smooth. I then stopped the mixer and added 1/3 Cup of expeller-pressed coconut oil, 1/3 Cup raw, unfiltered honey, 1 1/2 Tablespoons of yeast, and then 1 Tablespoon of sea salt.
After mixing all the ingredients together, I kept the mixer running and gradually added 5 1/2 Cups of einkorn flour and let it sit for 20 minutes. After this brief rest, I started the mixer and slowly added more flour until the einkorn dough was no longer sticking to the sides of the mixer bowl. I learned that making einkorn bread does require more flour than I thought it would but eventually it did stop sticking to the mixer bowl.
A note from the school of hard knocks: if I wash my mixer bowl in my dishwasher, it will always stay sticky – no matter how much flour I add or what type of flour I am working. I have to hand wash my mixer bowl to avoid perpetual “stickyness”.
Next, I cut the dough into the right size for my loaf pans, oiled my pans, and I put the dough in the pan to rise. Even though einkorn does have far less gluten than modern bread wheat, it does rise!
After the bread had risen for 90 minutes, I put it in the oven to bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Einkorn bread has a savory and nutty flavor. It was delicious! We had two loaves so everyone got to try a few slices and it was a hit! Go here for the full recipe.
I’m still working on the recipe…I hope to get it to rise better and fluff up. Also, after making einkorn pita bread, which has no oil in the recipe (I’ll post that recipe as soon as I can), I realized that the pita was light and fluffy and so I may not need to use as much oil as I do with modern bread wheat. Next time I make einkorn bread, I’m going to try using 1/4 Cup expeller-pressed coconut oil instead of 1/3 – or even no oil.
Stay tuned for my posts about einkorn tortillas and einkorn pita bread!
43 thoughts on “Baking Einkorn Bread”
Siyez Einkorn flourishes where most other wheat can’t survive. This variety of wheat, indigenous to Turkey, survived through three months of snow and thousands of years of human history.The soil is poor and the winters are harsh in Kastamonu, a northern province of Turkey, bordering the Black Sea. But people have cultivated the land there since the Bronze Age, sustaining themselves on a nutrient-dense variety of wheat known as siyez einkorn.But with the average land holding for farmers in Turkey still between ten and twelve acres, many farmers in Kastamonu continue to practice subsistence farming.
Because it is not generally cost-effective to turn the tightly bound grain into flour, siyez einkorn is commonly processed into bulgur for local human consumption or animal feed. Communal harvest festivals have celebrated the harvest of siyez einkorn for generations and traditional production methods are still employed to process the wheat, though the mills are now powered by electricity.
I made bread with eikorn for the first time yesterday, with the recipe on Jovial’s flour bag (also on their website). Just mix it, let it rise, shape it, let it rise, and bake. I should have let it rise a little longer, I think, the bottom of the loaf was still a little dense, but other than that I’m happy enough with it. Not too dense, but would be even better if I could get it a little lighter. The dough was very sticky, I’m glad it doesn’t need much kneading! As it was, I already felt like the tar baby.
Will try again; might try next with sugar instead of honey, and might try soaking before hand.
I have just discovered Einkorn flour in my local health food shop. As I am trying to cut modern wheat I thought I,d give this a try. Here in the UK we have a few artisan suppliers and I have tried the Einkorn loaf which tasted good but was a bit dense. I then used a conventional recipe for cheese & chive scones (biscuits). They were great. So was the fruited soda bread I made next.
I think this flour makes lovely tasting baked goods but I haven’t revisited the yeast mixture yet. Will try allowing hydration time and making the dough more sticky as suggested. Also might try just one rise & straight to oven. Any more success stories would be helpful.