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Love this experiment Melissa. As you know I’ve only used Tangzhong and Yudane as my flour scalds. I’ve done bran scalds to soften the bran in 100% wholegrain breads but never used a scald in the way you are here. The information you shared on saccarification is interesting, it seems to me this type of method is frequently used in many Eastern European rye breads to bring out the natural sweetness locked into the flour.
I will say that I have found the same thing that you did, the much higher hydration achieved by scalding doesn’t make the dough handle like the high hydration you would expect if you’d just added that much water without the scald. That extra water really does seem to be locked into the gel of the dough and allows the dough to handle as a lower hydration dough would.
Love to receive your biweekly recipes. So adventurous and instructive. A question. I have no more splet, what other grains would you substitute for it?
Great article, Melissa!
Hello Melissa, Thank you for your ongoing experiments and testing bread recipes. My next rye sourdough i will try the scald method. I will always read and follow your bread recipes. Best to you and many thanks. Mike Kaplan
@Benito @Lambert @mcw.mark @mskaplan01 Thank you! The deep history of rye-scalds is something I’d like to explore more, possibly doing the long saccarification process. @raven mentioned that a thermos should be sufficient to hold that 145-149F temperature.
@Lambert I wouldn’t hesitate to try this with any other wheat / grain. If the entire dough is very low in gluten and/or the flour has a lot of enzymatic activity e.g. einkorn and rye, then I think you need to be prepared for gumminess or consider reducing the amount of flour in the scald vs the final dough.
For example, this recipe from the rye baker has 175 g flour in the scald, and a total of 645g flour. That’s 27% of the total flour scalded. http://theryebaker.com/deconstructed-saison-rye/
A couple things : preheat a thermos with boiling water , then pour out the water and put in the scald with suitable enzyme like malted (diastatic) barley or dried malted rye from home brewery shop and you can make the saccharified scald with flour or your choosing like spelt or wholewheat or corn or rye or mixed grains. Otherwise, you can use the temperature control on proofer to do this or if your oven is capable --mine isn’t. The way to avoid gumminess is to acidify the preferment and use in sufficient quantity even if you are using say spelt or wholegrain wheat, as well as rye. One thing to do also is to feed the scald to the preferment and that too eliminates the gumminess. So, instead of a three step process: levain, scald, final mix you have levain, scald, scald and levain as preferment, then final mix with the preferment. I really have not run into gumminess, if I do these things.
I’ve used corn, wheat, oats, spelt, rye and various mixtures of these along with diastatic rye malt for saccharification. I’ve also used 7 grain rolled grain mixtures too–it all depends what flavors you want .
“Levain plus scald as preferment”. This is the Russian opara, used in many Russian breads.
Awesome. Thank you for the details. I’ve got to dig around for a thermos or maybe an insulated travel coffee mug wrapped in a dish towel 
no, it is Сброженная заварка(fermented brew) not necessary the opara. In some cases the Сброженная заварка goes into the opara with another brew(scald) or not as well as flour and yeast.
Thank you for this article Mellissa. I always get excited when I see a recipe written for: sourdough, 100% fresh home milled grain. When the grain is spelt, it’s a no-brainer. I have a home milled wheat and korasan recipe that uses a “cooked flour” as they called it, but only 3 tablespoons of the flour. With this one having ⅓ of the flour scalded I knew this would be my project for this weekend.
Something went terribly wrong for me though and I just can’t see where it could be that much different, especially since the recipe is also written for fresh milled grain.
1st - my scalded portion turned out super stiff. When it had cooled down and I took it out of the pan I held it on one side and it stood straight out horizontally like a large hockey puck. Obviously way under hydrated for some reason. Not to be defeated, I tore it up in small pieces and worked it into the main dough.
2nd - the final dough was so dry (partly because there was no hydration available from the scald I’m sure) there was no way to incorporate all the flour. Only about half of it mixed in. I added more water, 1 tablespoon at a time (16 total) until it got to a stretchable dough.
3rd - as the process unfolded, the dough became more and more slack. Not behaving like your comparison to the non-scalded dough at all. As the bulk fermentation continued the dough just eventually became runny.
I will try this again and increase the hydration of the scald. Thanks for the video in your post so I know what to aim for. Hopefully that will be the catalyst needed to keep the final dough from going so bad.
I’m just baffled as to why the hydration was so far of one way in the beginning and then so far off the opposite direction in the end.
That sounds like an odyssey. I’m glad you kept adding water (khorasan is more thirsty than spelt in my experience) but I’m sorry you ended up with a runny dough as the fermentation progressed. That’s interesting and disappointing for sure. Something was going on enzymatically or the proteins were denatured by the scald…
I’m running low on bread (if I ignore what’s in my freezer lol) so I’ll give this a try with khorasan.
I’ll do the more tedious but temp controlled stovetop cooking of the flour 
Which method did you use to scald the flour?
I did both methods in my test bakes (boiling water pour and stovetop) but the boiling water pour was with the bread flour-spelt combo loaf, and all that gluten in the bread flour may have masked a denaturing issue in the boiling-water-pour scald.
I should ask also: did the gluten feel okay at the beginning of the fermentation (once the hydration was dealt with)?
@Neil_Mouritsen I made this bread/method yesterday with 100% homemilled khorasan, and I would not recommend it after seeing my results and comparing them with this Kamut bread that has no scald:
I’ll edit this recommendation/info into the blog post above.
I upped the scald hydration by 50g water, that’s about 3 Tbsp, (<-- edited to fix) in anticipation of dryness. But the first clip of the video shows the slurry before adding that extra 50g water…it was pretty wet. Is that what your scald looked like before coming up to temp?
The dough handled quite well throughout the entire process. Shaping, which you can see in the video, was not too far in feel from shaping a rye dough, but it wasn’t soupy – and it’s what I expect from whole grain khorasan/Kamut.
Unfortunately the outcome was quite gummy and denser than my other whole khorasan/Kamut experiences. I waited about 12 hrs to cut it.
Here’s a video of the whole process with a lot of piano practicing in the background. I left the sound because it’s kinda nice imo🙂
In case you just want to cut to the crumb:
I didn’t mean to confuse the issue by mentioning the korasan recipe. At this time I was only making the 100% spelt bread from this post.
I think you may have found my problem when you mentioned the denaturing of the protein. I was basically doing the method of adding the boiled water to the flour, but I did it backward. As soon as the water boiled I turned off the gas and dumped the flour in the pan of water. Maybe doing it that way retained too much heat.
I will make this again again and probably use the controlled stove top cooking method to be safe. The only other thing I can see I did different was that I used an Einkorn starter, but it doesn’t seem like that could cause the issues that I had.
All good. I’m glad I tried this with khorasan flour – good data to share. And the bread tastes awesome. I probably ate 1/4 of the loaf for lunch today 
Your idea that your scald might have been extra hot and protein denaturing (also evaporation causing ) sounds plausible to me.
I look forward to hearing how subsequent bakes go.
Edited to add: Einkorn is pretty active enzymatically I believe, so you might do your feed just before mixing the dough with spelt instead. Just to be safe
I attempted this bread again yesterday.
This time I did the scald method of mixing the flour and water and heating it while stirring. At 162⁰ I turned off the heat. The scald portion turned out much better this time. Still thicker than what I believe it should be though. Combined with the very low hydration of the remaining flour water mixture, it is still a very stiff dough. The final dough was not anywhere near as extensible as yours looks in the video.
However, the problem that I had last time with the final dough ending up uncontrollably slack in the end was not present this time.
The hydration issue I had this time could just be explained by the difference in spelt berries.
My final dough was still a little slack on the baking steel. I know spelt is like that, but I am shooting for the loftier loaf like you attained. I steamed the bake by placing ice cubes on the steel covering the dough and ice with a roasting pan. Maybe I just need to have a little longer stint in the freezer to firm it up more. My crumb is much more dense than yours also.
I’m glad the alternate scalding approach worked better for you. Your bread looks great. My loaves were not particularly tall, and they also did kind of splay when I tipped them out of the proofing baskets. I think that baking them in the batard baker, which has close side-heat, probably gave them a little bit of a height boost. (I wouldn’t really call it side “support” since the doughs are not so large as to fill the baker.)
Good luck with your next bake!
First, thank you Melissa for your hard work experimenting with scalding flour. I experimented with scalding prior to this, but your experimentation and review are the best I’ve seen to date.
I tried this with 50% whole grain spelt and 50% high gluten bread flour, scalding 1/3 of the flour (all spelt) and went a bit above 90% hydration to get a workable dough.
The dough stayed somewhat shaggy and was difficult to mix, but as I tasted the scalded flour it was very sweet, just as you pointed out. I was excited to see how the final loaf turned out, and again just as you suggested it was quite moist. Very flavorful, but moist similar to a rye that benefits from 24 hour rest.
I agree with your conclusion, it is personal preference. As for my preference, I decided not to scald in future batches due to (1) the extra work involved incorporating all the ingredients (the scalding is easy) along with (2) the somewhat wetter crumb. Although, I will say the sweetness and flavor of the loaf was definitely worth the test bake.
Again Melissa, Thank you for your inspiration.
Thank you. I’m glad you found this experiment interesting. Thanks also for sharing your experiment observations and adding to the data!
These days I’m mainly inclined to scald ingredients like the corn flour in this Corn Porridge Rosemary Sourdough or Broa de Milho or the solod or rye in this Lithuanian Rye recipe or the amount of scalded flour (about 20%) that goes in this Anadama bread formula, whether it be corn, spelt or a hard red.
