I’ve experimented with Kamut flour a couple of times before, but haven’t had a great deal of success with it. The discovery of a bag in the deep freeze inspired me to have another go!
Kamut is the registered trade name for khorasan wheat, an ancient grain believed to have been grown in the Fertile Crescent. According to Wiki, there are many legends surrounding its origin, with some claiming it was found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs.
The gluten structure of Kamut is relatively weak, and my previous attempts have resulted in quite heavy loaves with a tight, cakey crumb.
On the advice of Craig, who bakes amazing bread, I made a hybrid bakers flour and whole Kamut loaf. The results were delicious – the crumb was still quite fine-grained, but it lacked the cakiness of my previous attempts. The Kamut flour gave the loaf a nutty sweetness which we all found most appealing.
Craig advised that Kamut takes up a lot of water and needs a gentle touch – if it’s overworked it will collapse and the grain will tighten up. He also recommended a long bake to compensate for the high moisture content.
Here’s the formula I used:
- 300g active sourdough starter (166% hydration, fed at a ratio of one cup water to one cup bread flour)
- 600g water
- 75g olive oil
- 650g bakers/bread flour
- 400g whole Kamut
- 16g fine sea salt
This 74% hydration dough made two 1kg boules which were cooled, then wrapped in paper and left to rest overnight before slicing.
. . . . .
With my leftover flour, I tried Joanna’s Russian Rye technique to see if it would work with Kamut.
The method is intriguing – there is no kneading involved, and the dough is simply mixed, then poured into loaf pans and left to rise until it’s ready to bake. It’s a two-part process – an overnight sponge, followed by mixing and proving the following day.
Overnight Sponge
- 100g active sourdough starter (hydration is not overly important here)
- 400g whole Kamut flour
- 600g water
Dough
- All of the overnight sponge
- 180g lukewarm water
- 30g molasses (I used date molasses)
- 20g fine sea salt
- 460g whole Kamut flour
1. Combine all the sponge ingredients together in a large bowl and mix well. Cover and leave overnight.
2. The following morning, add all the remaining dough ingredients to the sponge and stir well to combine (I used my Danish dough whisk). Scoop the dough into two greased loaf tins, sprinkle with sunflower seeds, then cover and allow to rise in a warm spot for several hours.
3. When the dough has risen almost to the top of the loaf tins, preheat the oven to 210C with fan. The loaves won’t rise any further in the oven, so they need to be fully risen before baking. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 175C with fan for a further 30 minutes – as the Kamut holds a lot of water, it needs a long slow bake to ensure it doesn’t end up gummy.
4. Remove the loaves from the tins and allow them to cool, then rest them overnight, wrapped in paper. Resist the urge to cut them too soon, as they really are better the following day.
We loved these 100% Kamut loaves – they sliced well, kept well and made a perfect foil for our open sandwiches!
If you’re in Australia and want to buy Kamut (khorasan) flour, it’s available online from Santos Trading (although the shipping can be expensive, so it’s worth waiting until you have a few things to order).
For more detailed instructions on how to make these loaves, please see Joanna’s post here!
Lovely post! What a contrast between those two breads. You are lucky to get such good advice on how to get the best from this flour from your friend Craig.
Those breads look superb. Thanks for all the mentions too but I would never have thought of using that method with this flour, genius :)
Very interesting recipes, both of them. Now, of course, I’m tempted to go in search of kamut flour. Let’s hope I can sneak the bag inside the house without my beloved catching me…. I can imagine the jokes he’ll make about “yet another type of flour” reaching our pantry
Joanna and Sally, I thought you two might enjoy a bread geek post! :)
The Kamut/khorasan flour is really very nice, but just worked normally, the 100% kamut loaf would produce a very tender, tight crumb that is quite crumbly and cake-ish. Jo, I’m really impressed by how well the “Russian rye” version worked – we finished the last of the first loaf off yesterday (day 3) and froze the other one. I’ve found that the original Russian rye loaves are greatly improved by a little rest in the freezer!
Craig has had better success with a high hydration sourdough using a combination of white and whole kamut, so as soon as I get around to buying some white, I’m going to give that a go as well. The flavour of the hybrid loaf was really nice though – Pete preferred it over the spelt/bakers combination!
Thanks for this post, Celia, I’d not heard of Kamut before. Your results look as good as ever and the 2 100% kamut loaves look very good indeed – just begging for some smoked salmon to be draped over them!
Thanks Amanda! The technique Joanna used for her rye loaves worked really well with the kamut flour! They are a little like the pumpernickel bread I grew up on, so smoked salmon is a perfect accompaniment.. :)
I came across kamut recently seeing a fellow blogger create a starter with some..it was virtually leaping out of the container! This is something that I definitely want to play with one day, thanks Celia!!
Chris, I think there’s a big difference in how the white and wholemeal kamut flours responds – the white I believe is much more responsive. The flour has a really delicious flavour – nutty, sweet, quite unique. Hope you find some to play with! :)
Really good post- and I love the pictures!
I’m like Sally- it would be really hard to sneak another flour into the house under my husband’s nose! BUT- having said that- I’m going to keep an eye out for the kamut flour and give it a try!
Thanks Heidi! It’s a nice change from the usual loaves we bake!
Both breads look fantastic. I have a friend who made chocolate chip cookies with kamut flour…I thought they were great…a different texture, but I liked it.
Thanks for stopping by! I never thought to use kamut in cakes and cookies – thanks for the suggestion!
The loaves look so lovely. I like the look of the bubbles in the top photo, and I have the same problem with sneaking in new flours too- sorgum, potato, millet… but they all have their own special qualities and personalities how can I choose between them?
Thanks Becca! Surely BigJ is happy to try all your new flours when you bake amazing things with them? ;-)
Love Kamut and buy it regularly and all your bread baking is so professional looking and I wish I was your next door neighbour so I could organise a trade with you. Roz
Roz, that would be so much fun! I’d come next door for cooking lessons from you! :)
Lovely loaves, Celia. I’ve been baking a 50% kamut with the premium gold bread flour, they’re nice but not quite as open texture as yours. I’ll have to try the rye method with 100% kamut. I make it fairly often but the loaves tend to shrink in the oven. Hope you’re ‘enjoying’ the rain! We’ve had 115mm–almost makes me want concrete instead of mud.
Liz, I can only get the Premium BF flour here, haven’t seen the Premium Gold. I’ll watch out for it! The first loaf (the hybrid one) had almost no handling, and yet the crumb was still quite tender. Do you use white or whole kamut? Craig’s advice with the whole kamut was that it needed to be about 35% of the mix, and it worked well for us – still a strong kamut flavour, but with a bit more elasticity in the finished bread.
It’s sooo wet here! I asked Pete yesterday if I could towel-dry the chooks, and he just laughed at me!
I haven’t used white kamut, yet. Will order some to give it a go since I have a couple of friends who would like bread without modern wheat. I’ll have a go at lowering the % of kamut and see if I like the texture better.
Sunshine today! Maybe it will dry a little. I can’t let my chooks out because we have a ‘chicken’ hawk taking the young ones and bantams.
Nice one Celia. I would never have thought of using that technique for the 100% Whole Kamut either. They look soooo good.
Craig, thanks so much for all the advice! It’s a nice flour to play with, and I would never have been inspired to try again if I hadn’t seen all your pics!
Yet another delicious looking loaf by Celia. Yum!
Thanks Claire! :)
They look lovely Celia. I haven’t heard of Kamut flour so I will have to keep my eye out. I’m a bit slow on the uptake with different flours, I only used spelt for the first time yesterday!
I almost sent some home with Mr Chocolate the other day, Brydie, but I hadn’t tried it yet, and I wasn’t sure it was still ok after being in the freezer for so long! Bugger…
Your freezer sounds like ‘the magic pudding’ Celia – something in it to feed everyone! Stay warm and dry – your weather just now sounds awful – poor little chookies.
Jan, thank goodness the rain has eased up a little now! We got an extra tarp over the girls, and put in their dust bath, so they had somewhere to dry off in. They’re pretty cross though – and hungry in the cold! Still laying though, the troopers.. :)
I think its really neat how you eagerly experiment and come up with new breads and techniques. Kamut is one I don’t have yet. Hubby never teases me about the many flours we now have, but my problem is finding any more room in my fridge (or freezer) for them. You must have a large freezer! The breads look so delicious!! I still get confused about what the difference is between say whole spelt and white spelt and how they behave differently in breads.
Mel, many years ago we bought a small second hand freezer from a friend for $100. I think it was nearly 20 years ago now! It’s set on its warmest setting, so it uses much less electricity than it normally would, and I use it to store flour, grains, pulses etc. – anything that might get bugs in it from the warm weather!
Re the whole vs white – it’s the same as white bakers flour vs wholemeal bakers flour – one is the entire grain, ground up, the other has been sifted to remove the husk, and the flour is therefore white. Craig tells me that in the case of the kamut, it makes quite a difference to the finished loaf. I find whole(meal) flours bake heavier loaves in general.
They both look like beautiful loaves, and really interesting techniques too. Must be more adventurous in my bread baking, I seem to be stuck in a rut at the moment.
I’ll have to try and resist Kamut flour on my own – there’s no OH here to sneak it past, but I’ve got too much flour to be needing any more. I’m very tempted indeed though!
this is a product I have never heard of before :)