the spelt ~ wheat ~ feta ~ cheese bread

A while ago I wrote about a spelt-cheese bread that turned out so fabuously. The recipe (in Swedish) comes from an excellent little café book I bought on Åland. One recipe from each café, 20 of them. So far I've tried two of the recipes, both turned out lovely. As far as I'm concerned these two grand recipes in this nice, unpretentious wee book with fine photos makes the book well worth the purchase, even if the other 18 recipes turns out to be not so appealing.

Anyway. I did tweak the original recipe (seven ingredients);

:: since I like to substitute wheat flour with as much spelt flour as possible. You do need a whole lot more spelt than wheat flour to form a doable dough. A lot. It will be a runny mess otherwise. Keep those measure cups coming until the dough is light but firm.

:: I didn't have any feta cheese spread at home (not even sure it exists ready made in Sweden...?) so I used the 150-200 g ordinary feta I had and just crumbled it instead.

:: And grated some more vegetarian cheese.

spelt-wheat-feta-cheese bread

1 L water
50 g fresh yeast
1 tbs salt
700 g wheat flour - this I took less of
300 g spelt flour - this I took more of
250 g fetacheese spread - I took less + ordinary feta
2 dl grated cheese - I grated a bit more
ca 2 dl flour for the shaping

Mix the yeast with tepid water, add salt. Add the flour, little by little, let the machine work/stir constantly. The dough shouldn't be too firm, yet not too loose, when it doesn't stick to the bowl it's about ready to go to rise. And rise it will. A lot. So don't use your best towel or let the bowl stand in the mixer while rising... Leave to rise under towel for about 30 minutes.

Prepare the work surface with flour. Pour the dough onto the surface, it will be quite soft (at least if you've used a lot of spelt flour). Knead it, then use a roller to shape it into a larger rectangle. Spread the feta and the grated cheese evenly onto the dough. Fold one half of the dough over the other. Then cut 2-3 cm slices and twist them (I got about 10-12 baguette shaped breads). Place them on the baking sheet and leave to rise, uncovered, for 15 minutes. (After rising you might want to brush the bread a bit with water or sunflower oil before it goes into oven.)

Preheat the oven to 200°C, bake the breads for 20-25 minutes. Remove, let cool uncovered on a rack.

Still warm eaten with a dollop of butter this is heavenly. The bread freeze well and is perfect to thaw in the micro for an instant quick meal with some fresh veggies on top.
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Recipe from Pettas bakery & café on Åland. Very much worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighbourhood.