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Awesome 100% KAMUT Bread

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My wife is gluten sensitive so she was trying some gluten free breads and they are nasty and go bad fast. I was able to make some gluten free breads from scratch but they are not as good as real bread. One night I made up some experimental kamut bread (using whole grain kamut flour that I milled my self in the WonderMill grain mill) and she had some and it did not cause her issues like other wheat products did, spelt grain and Kamut grain still have gluten in them but they are much easier to digest than regular wheat. So I decided I needed to develop a really good kamut bread so my wife could have some real bread that is easy on her tummy.

I have used kamut grain a lot in the past but not much for breads. One problem I have had with spelt grain and Kamut grain is that the bread dough has less gluten than regular wheat so it tends to not rise as well and is prone to collapse. It can also tends to come out very dense, which is OK but not ideal.

I have found that using a narrow bread pan helps in supporting the frame of the rising bread better than the regular shape of bread pans commonly found at stores. The narrow width keeps the bread from collapsing while rising and it seems to rise better, giving you a better crumb in the finished bread. I also found that it helps in cooking the bread more evenly through to the middle if the pan is narrower.

I also like dark color bread pans better as well since they conduct heat fast and don’t take long to get hot. Do not use glass bread pans, they will fail you.

Get a good bread pan, it will make a big difference in your bread, especially whole grain breads. The bread pans I now use is the Norpro 8 inch bread pans as shown in the photo to the right. This pan is narrow, dark, a nice non-stick beveled sides, and is a great price too.

After quite a few experiments while my wife was on vacation in California I got the kamut bread close to the way I wanted it to turn out and got it nailed down over Thanksgiving vacation. My little 8 year old enjoyed eating all the experimental bread with me, especially with our homemade peach jam.

So here is the recipe for two 1 1/2 pound loves of 100% KAMUT grain bread, with no added dough enhancers or added gluten.

KAMUT Bread Recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups hot water
  • 1/3 oil (I use vegetable oil)
  • 2 tablespoons agave (honey or sugar will work too)
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 egg
  • 5 cups KAMUT flour (fresh ground in the WonderMill Grain Mill)
  • 2 teaspoons yeast (I like Saf yeast)

Directions:

Add water, shortening, sugar, and salt to the WonderMix mixer bowl.

Add 3 cups of the flour to the mixer bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top of the flour.

Add the egg on top of the flour.

Turn on the mixer and add the remaining flour (you may need a little more or a little less than 5 cups).

Mix for 5-6 minutes, just until the dough looks good.

Remove from mixer and place in a oiled container to let rise for 1 hour.

Punch down dough and form 3 loaves and place in 1 pound bread pans.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees while the dough rises in bread pans for about 30 minutes.

Put bread in the oven and reduce heat to 350 degrees.

Bake for 26 minutes.

Remove from bread pan and let cool for at least 15 minutes (1 hour for best results but we all know how hard it is to resist bread right out of the oven).

*NOTE: you can use this dough recipe for rolls if you cut the KAMUT flour down to 4 1/5 cups so it is a stickier dough, which is better for rolls.

My Kitchen Mixer
I use the WonderMix Revolution kitchen mixer for all my breads, it does an excellent job developing the dough’s gluten for a silky smooth elastic dough. For batches of dough smaller than 5 loaves I like to use the dough divider attachment, I do spray it with oil before I put it on the mixer so it works much better instead of dough sticking to it.

How to grind your own kamut flour
I use the WonderMill electric grain mill for all my grain grinding, it does the job fast and it has a top brand motor in it that will last and perform. It is so awesome to pour 5 cups of grain in the WonderMill and it is done in a minute or so, and the flour is so fine and perfect.

Learning to Use Flour Made from Whole Grains

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It is so easy to store whole grains for 10 to 30+ and they are so healthy and life sustaining for us, it’s no wonder that they are part of most food storage pantries. I also store several types of whole grains so I have variety in my diet and don’t get sick of eating foods made from the same hard white whole wheat, but having hundreds of pounds of whole grains won’t help me much if I don’t know how to use them. That is why this past 2 years I have been slowly learning how to use these different grains.

This past 2 years I have decided that it is a good thing that I have decided to learn how to use these whole grains before an emergency happens in which I am forced to use them. I have had many failed baking projects but I am getting much better now. I feel a lot more confident that we could live off our food storage now than I did when I first started. I also found that I like using whole grains in my diet and it has made our family healthier, plus it’s good on our budget. I can get bulk grains for cheap, I got 45 lbs of hard white wheat for about $20 at Costco the other day.

One of the biggest focuses of my learning to use whole grains has been using the flours I make from them in my grain mill. I recently found a resource that has opened my eyes to how many different things I can make. While searching for recipes using a grain mill, I found www.grainmillrecipes.com that is a picture catalog of whole grain recipes from across the web with links to the recipes. I just want to make all the recipes on the website! I have only tried 3 recipes so far but they were good.

The first recipe I tried, that I found through grainmillrecipes.com, was buttermilk whole wheat pancakes. After eating these pancakes I threw away my Buisquick pancake mix. We now have pancakes twice a week and my 2 year old gets mad that we don’t let her have more that 3. They are so easy to make too, just mix it all together and cook them up. I use powdered buttermilk in this recipe because it stores well and I keep a few containers in my food storage, an unopened container can keep for over 2 years. I have substituted the whole wheat flour for spelt flour or Kamut flour at a 1:1 ratio and it still works good. I have also put oat flour in these and it works, I add 1/2 cup oat flour and subtract 1/4 wheat flour to make this work because oat flour is lighter than wheat flour.

 The second recipe I tried, that I found through grainmillrecipes.com, was whole wheat oatmeal buttermilk bread. This bread had an incredible taste to it, and yes I am on a buttermilk kick lately. I have only tried this recipe once so far. I didn’t bake mine quite as long as I should have because I didn’t want the top to get to dark but I should have let it bake 5 to 10 minutes longer. This made one huge loaf, I think I will double the recipe and make it into 3 loafs so they will be a little smaller. I used freshly rolled oats that I made from whole oat groats using a Marga oat roller I borrowed from a friend, I’m sure this made all the difference in the taste.

I am really considering buying an oat roller for myself but that is a $120+ investment so I will have to save for a while. I hope my friend will let me borrow it some more so I can get more familiar with it and how to use rolled oats. I would really like to learn how to use oats more as a flour, rolled, and whole. I can make steel cut oats in my Wonder Junior hand grain mill but I haven’t tried it yet.

If there is one thing I have learned about making bread in the past 2 years is that I usually have to make a recipe a few time before I get it right. This is because everyone measures flour differently, mixes or kneads with different methods, has different temperatures for rising, has different degrees of fineness of whole grain flours, has different ovens, and on and on……. So if a bread recipe doesn’t come out quite right, you might give it another try or two.

The  third recipe I tried, that I found through grainmillrecipes.com, was Pumpkin-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Many of us have made the Weight Watchers Pumpkin Cakemix Chocolate Chip Cookies but I have always wanted to remake them with whole grain flours. This recipe is much different than that recipe because of the amount of rolled oats but it was quite similar in many ways as fare as taste and texture.

I used freshly rolled oats again for this recipe since I have my friend’s oat roller on loan. But the real key ingredient in this recipe is the pumpkin. Canned pumpkin puree is something I think everyone should have in their food storage. It has so many good uses and can turn plain baked goods into extraordinary.

I also used Kamut flour in place of the whole wheat flour because I like the taste of Kamut and spelt flour over whole wheat in pastries and cookies. These cookies came out as a real treat, even 2 and 4 year old kids eat them up.

The best advise I can give to someone wanting to learn to use whole grain flours more is to just pick out some recipes and give them a try. Sure your going to have some failures but you’ll start to find some that you can do well. Its a whole lot better to figure out what works well now that to try to figure it out later when you have to.