Sunflower Spelt Loaf & Toast for Dinner
Celebrating hearty, dense bread and making toast into a full meal.
Let's normalize dense bread. A light, airy, hole-y loaf stands out as the holy grail of bread-baking these days. Don't get me wrong, those lofty breads taste incredible. I cherish them. But many of them can taste the same. Delicious, but the same. I yearn to see crumb shots of a dense yet well-fermented loaf of whole-grain bread chock full of seeds, nuts, and cracked grain.
I am astounded by the sheer diversity of breads in German baking. A range of dense, whole grain, seeded, nubby loaves sit on bakery shelves sit alongside French, Italian, and American-inspired loaves. Many of the more brick-like creations wouldn't move here in America. But these moist, hearty breads offer a ton of flavor. German bakers pack these breads so full with stuff that some Americans might question if they are really bread. They're usually slowly fermented with whole-grain sourdough, so they take on an earthy complexity with a bit of soft brightness. You can cut impossibly thin slices that somehow are sturdy enough to hold some Speck (a smoked, cured pork product from Tirol and South Tyrol, my favorite) and some Käse (cheese). They're born to be tartines or simply slathered with butter and jam. Because most of them are whole grain and many are full of seeds, these breads give you a ton of energy, nutrients, and fiber.
You see these lovely leaden loaves across German-speaking parts of Europe, but much more rarely in the States. One of my favorite local bakeries used to make a heavenly sunflower seeded rye bread, dense with the most fragrant, almost cinnamon-scented locally grown rye flour. When they took that chonker of a loaf off the menu, I asked them why. They said that it didn't sell well. Cue my sad violin.
It's my mission to change that. This loaf was inspired by a lovely Dinkelbrot loaf from the foodie-heaven Zingerman's Delicatessen and by the Dinkelstück from my newfound favorite German bakery chain, Zeit für Brot. (Dinkel is German for spelt.)
Sunflower Spelt Loaf
Heavily adapted from this recipe by Dan Lepard.
This mostly hands-off loaf gives you a flavorful, hearty, wholegrain loaf without the need to faff about with a sourdough starter. The long fermentation gives this bread a ton of flavor, and a touch of honey complements the natural sweet tones of spelt. (Don't get me wrong. I love a good sourdough. It's the pinnacle of bread. But some days I just don't have the time for a good long fermentation. Or my starter, Pauline, is not as active as she needs to be.)
This bread evolved from my love German-style Dinkelbrot (or Dinkelstück). This bread doesn't resemble soft squishy American loaves. It's one of those dense (in a great way) 100% whole-grain breads, full of seeds, that you can slice very thinly. It's equally delicious spread with butter and jam or topped with some cured meat and cheese.
This recipe takes at least 15 hours, but only about 15 minutes of hands-on time.
Makes 1 9-inch by 5-inch loaf.
350 g water
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
300 g whole grain spelt flour
60 g plain (unsweetened and unflavored) yogurt
30 g honey
200 g whole grain spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp (10 g) kosher salt
250 g toasted, unsalted sunflower seeds*
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the water, yogurt, and yeast, and stir to combine. Add 300 g of whole-grain spelt flour and stir until you don't see any bits of dry flour. Cover and let sit for 12-15 hours. I do this overnight.
After 12-15 hours, add the honey, 200 g whole grain spelt flour, and salt. Fit the mixer with a dough hook and mix on low speed for 5 minutes. Stop the mixer, and remove the bowl. Add half of the sunflower seeds and using your fingertips, press them deep into the dough. Flip the dough over, and add the other half off the seeds and press them into the dough. Return the bowl to the mixer and mix on low speed for about 1 minute to mix in the seeds.
Oil or butter a 9-inch by 5-inch loaf pan. (This loaf pan is my absolute favorite.) Scrape the dough into the pan and use wet hands to press and smooth it into an even layer. Cover the pan (I like to use a clean shower cap.) and let it set for 1 1/2 to 3 hours, until it's risen about by about 50-70% (not doubled in size). As always, the rising time depends on the temperature of your room, during the summer mine only took 1 1/2 hours to proof, but in the spring it took almost 3 hours. Just before rising is done, heat your oven to 425F with a rack on the middle of the oven.
When the bread is proofed, pop it in the oven then immediately reduce the temperature to 400F and bake it for 48 minutes. The bread should be a deeply burnished almost amber-gold color. Once it's done baking, take it out of the pan and set it on a cooling rack to cool completely, about 4 hours. Once it's totally cool, wrap it in plastic or put it into a bread box. This bread is best about 24 hours after its baked, so plan ahead a bit. Waiting gives you an interior that's moist but not gummy, and the resting lets you slice it nice and thin.
This loaf lasts on my counter for up 6 days. If you don't eat it all, you can slice it and freeze it in an airtight container.
As always with bread, slice it with a serrated knife.
*I can easily find unsalted, toasted sunflower seeds at the grocery store. If you can't find toasted seeds, simply spread un-toasted (AKA raw) seeds on a sheet pan and put them in a 350F oven for about 8-10 minutes, until they begin to smell fragrant and toasty. Let them cool completely before adding them to the dough. You can also swap the sunflower seeds for toasted pepitas.
Toast for Dinner
I created the spelt loaf above and used the cottage cheese ricotta so that I could have my evening bread, my Abendbrot. Abendbrot literally translates to evening bread, a custom in parts of Germany, where folks sit down in the early evening for some cheese, meats, or other spreads on bread. Many days, especially in the summer, I eat like this. I don't feel like turning on the stove or firing up the grill. I may even have some great produce on hand. (I see you, heirloom tomatoes! Ripe peaches! Fresh herbs!) So I'll sit down to Abendbrot.
I’m definitely not alone in the love for toast as dinner. I recently listened to Stephen Satterfield on an epside of The One Recipe discuss his love for a toast meal. And Prue Leith just published an entire cookbook on toast.
Here are three of my current favorites:
Ricotta Tomato Toast: Take a slice of bread and toast it. Cut 1 clove of garlic in half (no need to peel it). As soon as the bread pops out of the toaster, rub the cut-side of the garlic clove on the bread. Drizzle the bread with some flavorful extra virgin olive oil. Top it with 2-3 tablespoons of ricotta cheese, spread thickly. Take a thick slice of a large tomato or quarters of cherry tomatoes and stick them on top of the ricotta. Sprinkle the tomato with a pinch of salt, then drizzle it with 1/2 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. If you have some fresh basil, chop it up and top the toast.
Stone Fruit Ricotta Toast: Do the exact same as above, but omit the garlic. Pit and slice a fresh, juicy peach, nectarine, plum or sweet cherry. Put the fruit on top of the ricotta, add a pinch of salt, balsamic, and maybe some chopped fresh basil or mint, or springs of thyme
Miso-Sumac Avocado Toast: Get a slice of bread. Toast it, or if it's a hearty dense bread (like the one above), you don't even need to toast it. Slice the bread and then spread it with about 1 teaspoon white (shiro) miso. Take about 1/3 or 1/2 of an avocado and add slices on top. I like to mash the avocado a bit with a fork if it's soft. Then top it with some a hefty pinch of ground sumac for tang. For me, the miso is salty enough, so I don't add any extra salt.
Cheese and Meat: Get some delicious cheese, ask your cheesemonger what cured meats go best with that cheese or vise versa. Get some thinly sliced cured meat: Speck is my favorite, but prosciutto, ham, or even a good smoked turkey would be great. Spread your bread with some whole-grain mustard, add the cheese and meat. Or forgo the mustard if you have some top-shelf cheese and meat. Serve some sort of pickled veggie. Today my favorite is Speck and a slice of Pleasant Ridge Reserve
And there is always the option to have toast for breakfast.
Cheers,
Martin
Hi, I see yogurt in the ingredients but it’s not mentioned anywhere in the instructions. I’m guessing it goes in at the beginning with yeast, water and flour but perhaps you could clarify? Thanks!
I LOVE Zingerman’s!