Spelt is one of my favourite grains to make bread with and I often use Alessandra Zecchini’s recipe from her book, Savour.

400 ml warm water
2 ½ tsp active yeast granules
¼ tsp sugar
250g spelt flour
250g white flour
pinch salt

Place warm water in bowl, add yeast and sugar and set aside for 5 mins until the yeast starts to bubble. Add flour and salt and mix with your hand then turn out onto a floured board and knead for 7-8 mins. Roll into ball, but back in the bowl, dust with flour and cover with a plastic wrap. Leave for an hour or until it has doubled in size. Punch down dough and form into 2 loaves. Place generous amount of caramelized onions on top of each loaf. Leave to rise for another half hour.

Bake at 200C for 30-35 mins on until cooked through.

My other bread effort recently was apricot and walnut bread. To the usual yeast starter I added spelt flour, a cup of chopped dried apricots and about a cup of walnuts ground in the coffee grinder. I didn’t use a loaf tin so the dough spread out quite a bit, more like a foccacia shape. The walnuts add a lovely texture and nutty flavour, offset nicely by the tangy apricots.