Ancient Grain Focaccia
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably pictured the apocalypse at some point in your life. In the past, when I imagined the apocalypse, I pictured flames, destruction and despair. Abandoned cities where buildings have started to crumble. The few humans who have survived must learn to live off the land. This is the apocalypse I was expecting. I was not expecting to be concerned about gaining too much weight because there’s nothing to do besides eat.
It didn’t occur to me that we would do something to stop the world from ending. I figured once the end times came, we would all just accept it and start looting Best Buy immediately. This hasn’t been the case. People are staying home to flatten the curve and prevent others from getting sick. People are getting groceries for their elderly neighbours. Worst of all, people are using this time to become better people and learn new skills.
A lot of us have decided bread baking will be our new skill. It’s not hard to see why we would turn to bread at this time. Carbs are the comforting friend we all need right now. A warm slice of freshly baked bread is like a hug. And if you live alone like me, you haven’t felt the touch of another human being, let alone been hugged in about a month.
Last week I decided to jump on the bread baking train.
I did not bake the bread in this photo. It’s a stock image.
I’m no stranger to the kitchen. I have some basic skills like boiling water and making toast. However, out of the four ingredients needed to bake bread, I only had two: water and salt. I had to venture out into the world to find flour and yeast.
Going to the grocery store used to be an activity I didn’t give much thought to. Now, it’s the most dangerous thing I do. When I touch a shopping cart, I’m taking my life in my hands. Small talk with the cashier? Might as well wave a knife in their face.
When I arrived at the grocery store, the line snaked through the parking lot. Luckily, I came prepared to wait in line. I pulled out a book and started reading. Without thinking about it, I rested the book on the handle of the cart. And then I realized - what if the cart is infected with Coronavirus? Is the book now infected with Coronavirus? And if I touch the book and then touch my face, will I get Coronavirus? And what if, for some reason, I wanted to lick my book? I’ve never felt the need to do that before, but I would like to have the option.
Finally I made it inside. I socially distantly made my way towards the baking aisle. It’s an aisle I’m not totally familiar with. It has ingredients like, “salt”, “baking powder” and “vanilla”. I looked for flour, but all I saw was a completely bare shelf. Except for one last bag of flour. But not regular flour. It was spelt flour.
According to Google, spelt flour is an ancient grain that can be used as a substitute for all-purpose flour. But that just led to more questions. What is an ancient grain? According to Wikipedia, ancient grains are a “grouping of grains that are considered to have been minimally changed by breeding over recent millennia, as opposed to more widespread cereals such as corn, rice and wheat which are the product of thousands of years of selective breeding.”
In the baking aisle of Loblaws, I continued down the ancient grain rabbit hole. According to the Whole Grains Encyclopedia, twelfth century mystic St. Hildegard was a big fan of spelt. In fact, he is said to have written that spelt is “the best of the grains. It produces a strong body and healthy blood to those who eat it and makes the spirit of man light and cheerful. If someone is ill, boil some spelt, mix it with egg, and this will heal him like a fine ointment.”
“If it’s good enough for St. Hildegard, it’s good enough for me,” I thought. I grabbed the bag of spelt flour, some yeast, and went home to wash my hands for twenty minutes.
When I got home, I mixed the spelt flour, water, yeast and salt and they became dough. I let the dough rise. I put the dough in a pan. I let it rise again. I pre-heated the oven and put the bread in.
I thought about people who baked bread thousands of years ago, using the same ancient grain I was using. I wonder what they thought about while their bread baked. I was thinking, “I wonder how many likes I’ll get on Instagram when I post a photo of my freshly baked bread.”
One day, I long to bake bread then wrap it in a blanket like a little baby.
Thirty minutes later, I took my bread out of the oven. It didn’t look how I thought it would look. I wanted a fluffy, white delicious cloud of bread. Instead, the spelt flour created a dark brown slab of what looked a little too much like cardboard.
I waited about five minutes for it to cool down and cut a slice. St. Hildegard really should have mentioned that when something is healthier for you, it also tastes healthier. I didn’t bake bread because I wanted something healthy. I baked bread because I wanted the comforting embrace of an unhealthy carbohydrate, devoid of as much nutritional content as possible.
Instead, I had baked the bread equivalent of a salad.
Here’s my recipe for ancient grain focaccia:
Ingredients:
4 cups spelt flour
2 cups water
1 package yeast
1 tablespoon salt
Instructions:
Who are you trying to impress? You won’t get a medal for baking your own bread. Go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, you’re not Martha Stewart.
This is the final product. It was not supposed to look like this.