Einkorn Dough

Why Einkorn?
Einkorn vs other wheats

Ingredients

I recommend using all organic ingredients as well as clean water.

• 5 cups of Einkorn grain ground into flour (I use this Einkorn and grinder)
• 2 1/4 cups of water
• 4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (olive) oil
• 1/3 cup maple syrup or honey
• 1-2 packets of yeast (I use this)

Steps

1. Grind the Einkorn grain into flour. (No need to measure the flour when you use the right amount of grain)
2. Put water into large bowl.
3. Add oil first, then honey, and salt to the water in the large bowl.
4. Add about 1/3rd of the ground flour to the bowl.
5. Mix it all together thoroughly.
6. Add yeast to the bowl.
7. Add the rest of the flour to the bowl.
8. Mix it all up until it becomes like bread dough, and doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl.
   • Add a little extra flour if needed?
9. When it is made into dough, put a little bit of olive oil on your hands, and get your hands oiled to take hold on the dough without getting it stuck to your fingers.
10. Grab the dough and work it in your hands a little, then you can do whatever you want with it. See below.

Examples of how I might split the dough into portions

I weigh the dough on a kitchen scale when dividing into portions to make sure the portions are even.

• Split it into thirds, and make each portion into medium sized pizza crusts, or small bread loaves.
• Split it into thirds, and make one portion into a medium sized pizza crust, and make the other two portions into one good sized bread loaf.
• Split it into halves, and make one portion a large pizza crust, and the other portion a decent sized loaf of bread.

How to make dough into a loaf

1. Get out a sheet of parchment paper, and put it into your loaf pan.
2. Put dough into the parchment paper in the loaf pan. Get it looking good and not pressed down in there too hard. It’s going to try to expand in all directions.
3. Either rub a thin layer of oil onto it, to keep it from losing moisture, or put it somewhere where it won’t dry out or lose moisture.
4. Once it is in the loaf pan, let it rise for 2 hours or so. I usually put it in my toaster oven and turn on the heat just a bit to get the oven temperature around a hundred degrees, then I turn it off, just to get it going. The yeast multiples faster if it’s a little warm. If it’s hot, they’ll die, but warm is good.
5. After it has risen for 2 hours, it has probably risen as much as it can.
6. Take it out of the oven (if you put it in there), and set the oven to ‘bake’ at about 350 degrees (You want it to maintain a temperature around 325-350 degrees).
7. When the oven has reached the temperature, put the loaf in the oven, and set a timer for 35 minutes.
8. Make sure that the oven maintains 325-350 degrees, not getting any hotter, preferably staying at 350.
9. When the timer goes off, take the bread out of the oven.
10. Grab the parchment paper holding the bread, and take it out to set it somewhere, to begin to cool.
11. Wait 5-10 min to let the bread cool off a little, as it sets up a little bit more after it comes out of the oven. This might seem like a bad idea since you want to eat it right away but it seems to actually make the bread a little better if you let it sit for a little first.
12. Ready to enjoy, especially with butter. Cut entire loaf into slices before it fully cools off if you want it sliced, or it will be crumbly when you cut it later.

How to make dough portion into pizza crust

1. Use parchment paper like in the above steps.
2. Put dough into a pizza pan or skillet etc, and shape it however you want it.
3. You can let it rise for 2 hours like described above, and take care that it doesn’t let moisture escape, or you can just let it bake in the oven and it will rise some there when you bake it. Or you can let it rise 30 minutes, or an hour, etc, whatever. But after 2 hours it’s probably not going to rise anymore.
4. Put sauce, toppings, etc on the pizza.
5. Bake it in the oven however you want.
   • I would recommend that, when using a real oven, to set the oven to ‘bake’ at 450 degrees, wait until the oven is preheated, then put the pizza in on the middle rack for about 12 or 13 minutes, and maybe broil it afterward if the cheese looks like it could use it.
6. Take the pizza out of the oven when finished baking, and take the pizza by the parchment paper, and set it somewhere to be cut.
7. Wait 5+ minutes before cutting or you might ruin the distribution of the cheese.
8. Ready to enjoy.

How to freeze unused portions

1. Put dough onto parchment paper.
2. Wrap the dough up in the parchment paper.
3. Put it into some kind of air-tight container or baggy, and put that into the freezer.
4. To thaw it out, just take it out and set it somewhere, preferably on some sort of ‘rack’ so that it can be surrounded by air rather than solid surfaces so that it is not insulated but thaws out evenly and quickly. It might take 4 or so hours to thaw out this way.
   • If you are planning ahead, put the frozen dough on the bottom level of your refrigerator and let it law out overnight. That is the easiest method.
   • If you are in a hurry, somehow or another get the frozen dough ball into a big bowl of warm (not hot) water and it will thaw out within 30-45 minutes or so. Be sure that the water doesn’t actually come into physical contact with the dough thus making it soggy. Keep the dough wrapped in the parchment paper, and inside a plastic baggy, or maybe 2 plastic baggies. Water can get into those sandwich baggies so just be sure of what you’re doing. And if you do this, it is significant that you prevent the dough from being in direct physical contact with the plastic, hence the parchment paper.
   • Use the parchment paper for the baking also, as described in the above methods for making loaves and pizza crusts.