Spelt Tortillas

Spelt Tortillas

4 cups organic white Spelt flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon oil
1 1/4 cup water.

mix together all ingredients and knead by hand for about ten minutes. Weigh out into 60 gram balls and with a rolling pin, roll to a ten inch round.

Bake at 450 degrees for 3 to 5 minutes until tortilla is baked through. Use immediately for making burritos, Quesadiilas, whatever you want.

You can also cook them on a large cast iron skillet on the stove top. Frying on both sides, a couple minutes each side.

Please tell me your suggestions of what you would make with them.

I Love SPELT!

Spelt Pastry!

Finally a recipe on the Spelt Baker's Blog! I am sure that you are all expecting me to post a recipe once in a while and here is the first one. Why Pastry? because someone wrote on The Spelt Bakery Facebook Page that they wanted savoury pies and we do not have the proper license to make and sell them. So here is the recipe so that you can make it at home and fill it with whatever you want.

Spelt Pastry from Basic Spelt Cookbook by Janet Féirín

1 lb. (454 grams) of Shortening (I use Earth Balance Shortening that I buy at Donald's Market in Vancouver)
4 cups of white spelt flour (I use Organic Meadow, but have also used la Milanaise and Saugeen flours, make sure it's white!)
1 tablespoon of organic cane sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon of vinegar (if you can't have vinegar, replace it with lemon juice)
water

Blend flour sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl.
Use a knife, fork or pastry cutter to cut up the shortening into the flour mixture.
When the flour mixture looks like crumbs, make a well in the middle.
Beat the egg in a measuring cup with a 1 cup mark.
Add the vinegar or lemon juice and enough warm water to equal 1 cup of liquid.
Pour into well in flour mixture.
With your hands, squeeze liquid into mixture until a nice firm dough has formed. Be careful not to knead as this will make the pastry heavy.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Use for quiche, savoury pies, sausage rolls, etc.

I used to make a smoked salmon asparagus quiche with coconut milk for those who could not have cow's milk. There are also several options for vegetarian pot pies and meat pies.

I would love to hear your ideas for savoury pies! My favourite is chicken pot pie and I have always said that the reason mine is so good is because I start with a chicken.

450 degrees

Making puff dough out of Spelt flour is one of those things that I have done many times in the past and at the previous location of the bakery (The Spelt Bakery) we used it for making cherry pinwheels and fruit filled pastries. Then I met Christine and she made this fabulous savoury strudel with my puff dough.

However, the last time we tried to make cherry pinwheels, they failed miserably. We baked them in our convection oven at the bakery at 375 degrees and the puff dough did not puff. So on Saturday night I decided to try puff dough again.

I took some little squares of puff dough that I had in the freezer at the bakery and brought them home. I folded the edges over to make a little edge and then brushed all the edges with egg wash.

Meanwhile I sautée two large leeks and a red onion in a bit of olive oil in one of my favourite cast iron frying pans. I added a touch of a rosemary/raspberry sea salt and cooked the leeks and onion until soft with a little bit of a brown edge.

With a fork, I divided the leek onion mixture between my seven little puff squares and crumbled a soft goat cheese on top. I then put some fresh ground black pepper on top and baked all of them at 450 degrees in the oven and THEY PUFFED!!!

The recipe for spelt puff dough is in my cookbook, Basic Spelt, available from the bakery.

I was so excited that I kept smiling and laughing little happy laughs. For those of you who have not met me, I like to smile and laugh like a five month old watching the dogs. (That's a reference to my granddaughter, Lilja) I like to get excited by the small things in life, like a good meal and the success of my puff dough.

Quite frankly, there are enough of all those small things to make life quite enjoyable.

I hope you like the picture of my puffy little goat cheese, leek and onion tarts. They were delicious with our tapas dinner of skewered prawns, tomatoes and red onions on the bbq and chicken wings with Christine's honey mustard sauce.

Success at 450!!