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Hello,
This may be a strange question but when you say: * 340g [whole grain spelt flour or home-milled [spelt berries 2½ cups flour) do you mean it will take 2 1/2 cups of the berries milled to produce 340g of spelt flour?
Also can you use a round 3 1/2 quart Le Creuset cast iron pan to bake a round loaf? I was thinking that maybe this pan and size would provide the sides to give the bread support to grow and not spread. I’d love to buy the pans suggest but can’t justify buying more pans when I have 2 cast iron Le Creuset pans in 3 1/2 quart size, 1- 5 quart size and a 9 quart size. Thanks for your help! Janet
Not a strange question at all 
The spelt wheat berries and the resulting spelt flour weigh 340 grams. 340g flour is approx 2 1/2 cups of flour. My conversion is 130-135g per cup of flour, and the volumes are only approximations. The recipe was developed using the metric weight.
I’ve never baked a bread with 500g flour in a cast iron vessel as small as 3.5 qts., but I think it might work. I believe my oblong clay baker is around that size, and it gets filled with this size dough. I would be a little concerned about burning at the side contact points with the cast iron, but maybe you can take the loaf out of the dutch oven after about 25 min. I think it’s worth a try, but I also wouldn’t hesitate to use your 5qt Creuset, especially with the cold final proof, it should be stiff enough to grow upward.
Great! I’m always happy to see new whole grain recipes.
I’m not sure if this is the place to put it, but I’d like to add another suggestion for improving whole grain bread made from home milled flour. I use this technique for 100% whole grain breads of any grain as well as for the whole grain portion of breads made with mixed whole and white flour.
I’ve played around with various methods for blunting the negative effect of bran in whole grain breads with limited success. Several months ago, I was thinking about one of Melissa’s loaves where she added seeds to a loaf after doing all the stretch and folds and also reading on another site about the benefits of adding additions after the gluten is developed. I thought it might be worth trying the same technique with the bran.
So, now, after I mill my flour, I sift out the bran and add enough of the total liquid to moisten it in a small bowl. I let it soak while continuing to make the dough as usual. After I’ve finished the 3rd stretch and fold (or whatever method you use), I empty the dough onto the counter, spread it out and smear the moistened bran over the surface. Then, I roll it up jellyroll fashion and again roll the jellyroll into a snail shape. I’ve tried leaving it this way and proceeding but the bran layer was too noticeable in the finished loaf and sometimes caused the layers to split. So now, I knead it briefly until the bran is roughly incorporated into the dough before proceeding with the first fermentation.
This sounds more complicated than it is. I’ve been using this method for several months now and find that it works consistently to improve the spring, creating a plumper loaf and to improve the crumb considerably.
If you decide to try this yourself, I’d love to know how it works for you.
Wendy,
That’s a great tool for everyone’s whole grain baking toolbox – thank you for sharing the how-to!
As I sat down at my computer with a morning cup of coffee, I opened Breadtopia and saw this thread. I was about to mix a 60% Spelt dough, but since I’ve never baked a 100% whole grain bread using ancient grains, I had to give this one a try and have my autolyse going. All of my bakes using your recipes have turned out well and I owe you a big thanks, Melissa.
Richard
You’re welcome! Thanks for trying the recipe right off the bat. 
Did you refridgerate the higher hydration dough?
Yes, the final proof for the higher hydration dough was 13 hours in the refrigerator.
Here’s the info (in italics in the recipe):
I will be milling this flour from my own grains here at home. Since you are using a pre-milled flour in your recipe, can you tell me if this has been sifted to remove any of the bran, or is it completely 100% whole grain? I find recipes using pre-milled flours difficult to use at times since I mill my own flours.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
I used home-milled flours too, and no sifting. (I’m not sure if this is what you find too, but I think there’s a slight difference in hydration needs between home-milled flour and large-scale stone milled flour. The home-milled being a little thirstier.)
Hi Melissa, absolutely I find this too when trying to use conventional recipes with home-milled flours. The moisture called for never seems to make quite the same dough as what the recipe says I should have. Baking by braille for the win-
I struggle with the concept that pre-milled flours aren’t somewhat sifted. My results are so different when using pre-milled vs home milled. I’m using a Mockmill 200, and I know a lot of the bigger mills, like Azure, are using unifine milling, which seems to break the bran and germ down to an equal size as the endosperm.
I’ve read where some home-millers are sifting the bran and running it through the mill one or more additional passes, trying to get a more uniform whole-grain flour. I haven’t tried this, but it’s on my list of experiments.
I’m also convinced that a long autolyse is necessary with 100% whole grain flours. I just don’t see any other way to get that bran broken down so that gasses can build in the final bulk proof. Since I don’t love an especially sour loaf, I toy with an initial room temp autolyse for a few hours, and then move it to the fridge to finish autolysing overnight. Before fermentation, there doesn’t seem to be the commensurate souring of the dough one usually sees when chilling during final proofing. I will typically prepare my dough this way initially, and then proceed with a tartine-type method from there.
I once tried Trevor Wilson’s method of sifting out much of the bran and soaking it in boiling water while the remaining flour sat through a long autolyse. The soaked bran and liquid was then added back into the dough during the stretch and fold phase. This did help some as the bran was considerably softer after sitting in boiling water. The con is that it doesn’t seem like it ever gets evenly incorporated into the bulk of the dough, which is fine for additives like seeds, nuts, or other things, but less desirable when making a straight whole wheat.
I think that we modern bread bakers have become somewhat spoiled by Facebook and Instagram posts of lovely open crumbs and high loaves. I know home bread bakers who baked simply to put bread on the table because it was economical, convenient, and filled bellies, and before pre-milled and sifted flours, had no such expectations, and I try to remember that when I bake.
Best wishes!
I’m curious if you normally use your LeCreuset cast iron pots to bake bread in. The warm up and baking, is really harsh on these enamel pans. Although much cheaper and poorer quality I have all but ruined my enameled Lodge doing this. I now use simple enamel roaster pans (hard to get nowadays) no pre warm up and they work great. The main thing is just creating a small steaming environment during the first 20 minutes or so. I have not be able to create the necessary steam environment without a pan though, some people claim to be successful with this, I have tried everything imaginable, the oven just vents too much.
Hey Melissa great timing on the whole grain. I also did a trial run yesterday using Durum and White Organic home milled whole Grain in a mix. Turned out to be my best 100% to date as the crumb was outstanding, fairly decent sized rustic sized holes, crispy light crust and the rise was out of sight without using a vessel as it was baked directly on the stone. After tightening up the boule and setting the dough it did flatten out to an inch BUT sprung up 4 inches.
SECRET SAUCE: a large egg
I know from a puritan point of view you don’t put an egg in a rustic sourdough BUT I HAD TO TRY IT!
Used an overnight pre-mix with salt, then mixed the egg into the starter before folding into the pre-mix.
I attached a couple of pictures and yeah my scoring needs help but maybe someday!
I assumed the Durum had a protein level of 10 and the organic white also at 10 so I did some calculations for additions in the recipe below.
The egg really does wonders for giving the dough the extra support it needs to rise. This bread actually had a bit of extra bran included as I had sitting on the counter and it still popped up. No muss or fuss with the bran.
Original Recipe: 100% whole Grain
431 g Whole Wheat Flour (50% with starter) 100%
86 g Organic Durum 20%
3 45 g White Organic
ACTUAL RECIPE FLOUR AMOUNTS Using additions
413g Whole Wheat Flour Home Milled
77g Organic Durum
336g White Organic Spring Wheat
4.3g Barley Malt Powder 1%
18g Vital Wheat Gluten 4.1%
80 g Whole Wheat/Rye Leaven @ 100% Hydration 19%
31 0 g Water (3 50 g with starter water) 81 %
added 12g extra water during mix process, too dry!
1 egg 57g (57x.85=48g actual) 10%
1 0 . 3 g Salt 2. 4 %
total flour=4 71g
total hydration with egg 410g = 95%
Dennis - Your recipe sounds really interesting. I think it deserves a post of its own rather than being buried in the Spelt and Kamut post, possibly never to be found again! What do you think?
Maybe I should, I do somethings off the wall in my quest to try and improve things this turned out extremely well. MOST flop but then you can’t learn by not trying. 
Thanks, Melissa, I hope you will give this technique a try some time and let me know your results. One thing I forgot to include in my description is that after the initial milling and sifting, I remill the bran twice more which does make it finer.
@morgana It sounds like you’ve done a lot of whole grain baking. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Baking by feel is probably the best route to take in the end with all the flour, wheat variety, harvest, ambient humidity differences.
I know Breadtopia doesn’t sift out any of the bran in their stone milled flours, and those are the ones I use, mostly prior to getting a Mockmill. That may be why I only notice a slight thirstiness difference, which I believe is just due to the scale/power of the mill.
Check out @wendyk320 's comment above. It sounds like a good hand-kneading can get that sifted, re-milled, and soaked bran incorporated into the dough again.
I’m content with the results I get with a 1-2 autolyse and no sifting, even though I did an experiment comparing sift-soak with no sift-soak, and the former was a taller loaf.
I enjoy testing methods though and will try your approach soon, @wendyk320 especially since my test a while ago was only a 50:50 wholegrain refined loaf.
@DennisM That’s a neat sounding bread. I have no problems with enriching the dough with an egg. I bet it’s delicious. I’ve only used vital wheat gluten in panettone dough. Do you find it makes the crumb more chewy?
No more chewy than a typical 100% bread flour bake. You do though have to watch the amount used as yes it could get too chewy with too much. I have a formula but you need to know the protein content of the flour and what you want to wind up with.
For us everything seems to be a guess even if educated … hahaha a loose term!
Melissa, you bring up another good topic for discussion I think.
Have you tried to add a bit of VWG to lower gluten flours, like Kamut, Spelt, and Durum to strengthen the dough?
It kind of seems like it’s cheating, but by which rules? I know it’s not a purist’s approach, but are we more interested in working with the characteristics and weaknesses of the chosen flours, or do we want a superb crumb and loft?
To experienced bakers out there, is there any reason why it WON’T work?
Just a thought-
