Breaking Bread

These past few weeks I have been mentioning bread a lot - but especially one aspect of it. The flour. Continuing on with the theme of getting out of our food ruts, changing or combining types of flours for bread and baking is more then a treat.

I have found myself using barley, oat, gram, lentil and several other types of flours more often these days. Perhaps since the colder weather set in and I think it has to do with wanting some additional variety in our diets, but also to play around with them.

Most of the time for nearly all my baking I use whole grain organic spelt flour and it works out great. Occasionally I throw in some organic white spelt flour if I am making something a little more refined such as cookies or scones. 

But over these past few weeks I have been drawn to using more oat and barley flours in my breads - often mixed in with the spelt, which gives it far more flavour and quite a different texture. These breads are a little denser and heavier then plain spelt flour, however there is something quite nice about all of this experimenting.

Changing out flours can be better for us and most of them are easier to digest then wheat. The other important point here is that they are all nutritionally superior to wheat with loads more vitamins and minerals then even white spelt flour.

Apparently oat flour is one of the best flours you can use in your cooking and baking. I like it because it gives such a nice taste to the bread. It is also low in gluten and offers the goodness of oats. You can grind some yourself easily in a spice mill or coffee grinder in a few minutes. 

Getting a variety of nutrients in your diet is not difficult when you use a variety of foods from many sources. And your food will never be boring - something different each day can be created with just a little effort.

April

Spelt and Oat bread