{"id":153088,"date":"2025-03-24T05:46:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T05:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/recipes\/category-a-b\/bread\/my-first-attempt-at-einkorn\/"},"modified":"2025-03-24T05:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T05:46:02","slug":"my-first-attempt-at-einkorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=153088","title":{"rendered":"My First Attempt at Einkorn"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Baking with Ancient<\/strong> Grains<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you\u2019re like me and love to read about bread and home baking, you probably read other blogs (c\u2019mon, it\u2019s ok to admit it!) and look at those amazing pictures on Instagram too.\u00a0 After seeing a wave of bakers try their hand at Einkorn, I just had to see for myself what all the fuss was all about.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So, naturally, my first instinct was to research what the heck Einkorn was.\u00a0 After a cursory search I read that it is an ancient grain and after looking at some instagram posts I saw that it can be fairly hard to work with because gluten development doesn\u2019t really happen in the way that it does with \u201cmodern\u201d breads using bread or other commonly found off-the-shelf type flours for baking like whole wheat and all-purpose. <\/p>\n

Digging a little further, I found an article on the website of the Plant Science archives<\/a> of the Penn State University department of Agriculture.\u00a0\u00a0 That post told me that it\u2019s a very ancient wheat, approximately 10,000 years old and is an ancestor to our modern wheat.\u00a0 It is indeed an \u201cancient\u201d wheat!\u00a0 The article even mentions that it contains less toxins and could be better for folks with gluten sensitivities.\u00a0 It also contained a lot of scientific data that I won\u2019t pretend to really understand so I\u2019ll leave that to you to go over there and check it out.<\/p>\n

So, after reading about it and seeing delicious loaves of bread resulting from its use, I just had to try some!\u00a0 So I ordered a bag of Einkorn online and a few days later it arrived.\u00a0 In whole wheat form, which I knew was the case but knew that it added a layer of complexity to the project.<\/p>\n

\u2026 so I put off making this bread for a few months. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Milling Einkorn at Home
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If you have never milled any wheat at home, you\u2019ll quickly realize two things:<\/p>\n

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  1. Milling is hard!
    and<\/li>\n
  2. Milling is messy!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    However, it\u2019s very satisfying knowing that you can mill fresh wheat at home with simple tools.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually a very easy process if you think about it.\u00a0 Break down the wheat in to usable flour and discard the rest.\u00a0 Some folks use dedicated wheat<\/a> mills for to make fresh flour at home, but I have used my old Capresso coffee grinder<\/a> before and did it again for this bread with good results.\u00a0 The thing to keep in mind is that wheat is VERY hard so you need something with some \u201coomph\u201d to get the job done.\u00a0 A standard blade grinder is not a great idea nor is a weak grinder with plastic parts because the wheat could break your machine.\u00a0 Since we upgraded our coffee grinder a few years ago I have used the Capresso several times with pretty good results.<\/p>\n

    The first step is to put the whole grain in the hopper and set the grinder to it\u2019s most coarse setting.\u00a0 Run the grains through and you\u2019ll end up with something that is not too dissimilar from oat meal.\u00a0 It\u2019ll look flaky and not at all like flour.\u00a0 And that\u2019s ok, it\u2019s supposed to look like that at this point.<\/p>\n

    Milling Einkorn at Home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \"milling<\/figure>\n

    After you go through this first step, put it all back in the hopper and run it through at a medium\/coarse setting.\u00a0 I\u2019d say that if your coarse setting is 10 and your finest setting is 0, run it through a second time at a 7.\u00a0 Repeat again at a 4 and then again at a 0.<\/p>\n

    Once you\u2019ve milled it all the way through, put flour a little bit at a time in a fine mesh sieve and sift the flour on to a big bowl.\u00a0 This will take a while and be dusty so be prepared to commit some time to this task.\u00a0 Your end result will be one bowl of fresh flour and one bowl of the discarded chaff.<\/p>\n

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    \"the
    Einkorn wheat after it\u2019s been sifted<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
    \"einkorn
    Einkorn wheat after it\u2019s been sifted, this is the finished product<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Baking with Einkorn
    <\/h2>\n

    Being aware that Einkorn doesn\u2019t have\/produce much gluten gives us a heads up that in this recipe, I may have used too much water so adjust your bakes accordingly!\u00a0 Next time I make this bread I will either increase the quantity of whole wheat or decrease the hydration by 5% to see the difference.\u00a0 The dough was a little slack and challenging to shape, but I\u2019m happy with the result.\u00a0 The bread itself was very tasty with a soft chew, so even if you struggle like I did you will end up with a very good tasting einkorn bread at the end.<\/p>\n

    I didn\u2019t bake a purely 100% Einkorn bread \u2013 in fact, I merely dipped my toes in the Einkorn waters and made a roughly 25% Einkorn loaf, with the other parts being 50% AP Flour and 25% Whole Wheat.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the formula I used: <\/p>\n