My pantry was full of spelt last weekend. I decided to use it with a formula from The French boulangerie-patisserie confederation site. The loaf is a slow riser, 15 hours overnight with a firm starter that's salted. Honestly, I forgot to salt my batch. Also, while the final dough calls for a bit of yeast, I passed that for levain, as it's so hot here, and the starter was pushing with strength.

The hydration of the dough is about 70 percent.  I mixed my dough by hand, gently gave it some folds, but remembered not to over knead it, as spelt has a weaker gluten then wheat. The levain was all wheat, and I mixed into the final dough half white spelt and whole grain spelt.

Bulk fermenting after a short developed mix, I folded the dough three times to give it strength. What show's in the final dough is both great oven spring and great crumb.

I used a makeshift bannneton. Then, without my usual lame, I slashed with a bread knife, all very rustic indeed!

My mom's house isn't set up for baking, but being a resourceful "old" Army cook, I found a strange cooking pot with lid and layed the two loaves together. Yes they were kissing!

After a 20 minutes baking with a cover at 465 F, I took off the lid and proceeded to bake for about 15 more minutes. In the end I let it go another 5 more minutes just to get the nice golden color and the familiar hollow tap when taken out to cool.

Late lunch; a bit of goat gouda meets spelt slice. Verdict? Could of added a bit more salt, but with a good flavorful cheese or some butter, ham…it's really nice.