Spelt Foccaccia Bread

Foccaccia dough rising in a large silicone loaf tin

Spelt is an ancient form of wheat, and while it still contains gluten, it is able to be tolerated by those of us who don’t tolerate the fructans of normal wheat due to our FODMAPs intolerance. As soon as I heard about spelt from my fantastic dietician, Sarah Elliot from FoodSavvy, I got researching…

I found lots of confusing and contradictory information about using spelt flour to make bread at home, but the most useful piece of information with regards to the differing behaviour of normal bread dough and spelt bread dough is this: wheat contains two different types of gluten. One is what gives dough its ‘stretch’ and the other is what gives it ‘bounce’. Normal wheat has these two types of gluten in reasonably even quantities, which is why it holds a shape well, and springs back when you poke it. Here is where spelt dough is slightly more difficult to handle – spelt has less of the ‘bouncy’ gluten and more of the ‘stretchy’ gluten, so it tends to want to stretch and spread a lot more than regular bread dough.

However, I have found that it works pretty well just substituting white spelt flour one-for-one in most breadmaker recipes. The bread does tend to have a thicker, drier crust and is more crumbly than regular bread, but it sure beats all of the gluten-free breads I have tried!

This recipe is for a foccaccia loaf, but I have also had great success making it in a loaf pan – it lasted for days and made great toast! One thing I often do is add a touch more oil than the recipe calls for, I just feel like it must help keep the loaf a bit moister.

Put the following ingredients into your breadmaker:

250ml tap water

480g white spelt flour*

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp dried yeast / 3 tsp Edmonds Surebake yeast

*N.B: Spelt is NOT gluten free

The finished loaf... mmmmmm

Set your breadmaker to the ‘dough’ cycle and leave to process. After the time is up, grease the tin of your choice with olive oil. You could use a sponge roll tin, or a large loaf tin depending on what shape loaf you want. Press the dough into the tin, and leave to rise for 30mins. If you are making as foccaccia in a sponge roll tin, press your fingers into the dough to make dimples and drizzle some more olive oil over the dough. Bake in a preheated 200°C oven for 30-35 mins until it is golden brown.

Enjoy fresh for the first day or so, or toasted for up to a week.

Store any leftover crusts in a snaplock bag in the freezer to make into breadcrumbs when needed.