Kim Boyce of Good to the Grain (and the best laugh ever) says that if you're new to whole-grain flours and have to pick just one, go with spelt flour. Hear hear! This sweet, mild-flavored flour has become a favorite over the past few years for making everything from sandwich bread to pie crust.
Spelt is a very old, very hardy variety of wheat. It's been cultivated in Europe since at least the Bronze Age! The grain itself, which is delicious in its own right, is reddish in color and looks like a cross between barley and a sunflower seed.
Spelt flour has a mild and sweet flavor with none of the earthy bitterness associated with whole wheat flour. This isn't a flour that will weigh your baked goods down, either. Products made with spelt usually have a very tender, light crumb and a soft texture.
Spelt does have a fair amount of gluten-forming protein, so it's an easy substitute in baking. (Also take note, this is not a gluten-free flour.) It works well in a 50:50 mix with all-purpose flour when making baked goods like muffins and breads. But for things that require less structure, like pie crust and crackers, you can play around with increasing the proportion of spelt or even using 100% spelt flour.
You'll find find spelt flour in the bulk bins or the baking aisles of most grocery stores. Both Bob's Red Mill and Arrowhead Mills sell it in bags. Because it's a whole grain, spelt flour will spoil more quickly than more processed flours and is best stored in the refrigerator or freezer.
Try out spelt flour in these recipes:
• Spelt Crust Pizza with Fennel, Prosciutto, and Apples • Triple Ginger Cookies from 101 Cookbooks • Spelt Flour Crackers from The New York Times • Nigel Slater's Spelt Bread from The Guardian • Spelt and Oat Fig Bars from Sprouted Kitchen
Do you bake with spelt flour? Have a favorite recipe?
Related: Nutty, Sweet, and Gluten-Free: Almond Flour
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I love spelt flour. I make Indian flatbread -- chapati with it, use it in a pie crust, empanadas, and even these goey fudgy jaggery cookies:
http://smultronsoul.blogspot.com/2011/02/jaggery.html
quiche crust:
http://smultronsoul.blogspot.com/2011/11/portable-quiche.html
I also use spelt for making sourdough. I think we eat too much wheat (baked goods, pasta, bread) and this is a great alternative.
How long does a flour like this keep at room temperature? I have way too many things like this to keep them all in the refrigerator!
@Lazy_Lurker - It depends on the ambient temperature of your kitchen. Right now in the winter/spring, it will be just fine in the cupboard as long as it stays cool and dry. When it gets really and humid in the summer, I find that whole grain flours start to get funky a lot more quickly - like 2ish months?
I use spelt flour a lot. It does well in carrot cake and sesame cookies and many kinds of muffins. I use half spelt and half all-purpose in pancakes. I sub spelt for the cake flour in the NYTimes chocolate chip cookie recipe. I keep it in the freezer. The health food store sells it in 5-lb bags (Vita-Spelt, I think), which is a much cheaper way of buying it than the small Bob's Red Mill bags.
yes! I hate wheat flour, but I love my spelt flour. So much so that I'll order 25 lbs of it from a mill (makes it more affordable per pound) and store it in my freezer.
I've only baked one recipe with spelt flour but it's one of my very favorite recipes. It also incorporates rye flour. Ginger Cookies with Spelt and Rye Flour
Try It You Might Like It - Thanks for that recipe!
I love the nutty taste of spelt flour! One of my favorite recipes is Alice Medrich's Kamut Pound Cake and I always make the variation with spelt flour. All of Medrich's recipes are pretty amazing but that spelt pound cake is a real stand-out.
Thanks for sharing this. I try to use whole grains in cooking, but with baking, I'm not adventurous at all! This weekend I used 50-50 regular white flour and spelt flour in your no-knead bread recipe. It turned out pretty good. The crust is kind of light and crunchy like a rice cracker is, and the insides were yummy, especially warm with a little Kerrygold butter.