Spelt macaroni and cheese
VitaSpelt Spelt Elbows box.
In my quest to revive some of my favorite dishes with wheat alternatives, I set my eyes upon an American classic: macaroni and cheese. I used to make this quite a bit (never the boxed stuff!), and while in Whole Foods last week, I saw a box of spelt macaroni elbows. I just had to buy them.
At first, I thought I would use the classic mac 'n cheese method, which involves making a roux and a bechamel sauce. This issue has been that a roux is equal parts flour and fat (butter, oil, whatever), so when I tossed out the all-purpose flour a year ago, I also tossed out my mac 'n cheese recipes. But this past week, I also bought spelt flour, and was determined to give this a shot.
In the end, I chose not to make a roux. Why?
- Making a roux is difficult. I often mess it up.
- Making a roux takes time, and I wanted to get lunch on the table ASAP.
- I couldn't find much information about whether spelt works in a roux.
So instead I opted for a the Cook's Illustrated stove-top recipe.
Spelt pancakes
This past week, I picked up some white spelt flour from my local Whole Foods. For the past year, I have avoided baking due to the complexities of avoiding wheat flour, but have become determined to get back into the game. I have been pondering two questions:
- In what applications can spelt flour be used as a direct substitute for all-purpose wheat flour?
- Are there recipes for wheat-free baked goods that don't involve mail-ordering exotic ingredients?
My pancake adventure is the first of a three-part series that attempts to shed light on these inquiries. I took the spelt pancake recipe from the Our Big Earth website, which in turn claims to have adapted it from a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. It's no secret how to make pancakes. Looking at Alton Brown's pancake mix recipe, the ingredients and proportions are mostly the same.