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?

1. Making a roux is difficult. I often mess it up.
2. Making a roux takes time, and I wanted to get lunch on the table ASAP.
3. 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. Of course, I made a few modifications:

1. As usual, I halved the recipe.
2. I ran to the store to buy evaporated milk, and bought a 5 oz. can, even though I theoretically needed 6 oz. To compensate, I poured in a little regular 2% milk.
3. I threw in the cheeses I had on hand -- some American slices, some sharp Wisconsin cheddar, and some lite Trader Joe's 3-cheese blend.
4. To save time, instead of making and toasting breadcrumbs using spelt bread, I grabbed two rye crackers and crushed them up, and sprinkled them on top at the end.

The recipe was easy enough to make, so I won't harp on it. I do, however, have some observations:

1. There seemed to be too much sauce. I like sauce, especially cheese sauce, but ended up not using all of the egg mixture. I recommend not pouring it all in at once, in case you experience the same.
2. It needed more hot source. I used Frank's, and gave it about 10 shakes at first. But after tasting the sauce when it came together, I gave it another 5-10. Personal preference, I suppose.
3. The crackers did not work. They looked all right, but did not maintain their texture after sitting in the sauce for a few moments. In the future, I might try toasting or browning them, as I would breadcrumbs.

Final product, with cracker crumbs.

The taste was good. Most casual eaters would have never known that this recipe was made without any wheat ingredients (compared to a standard roux recipe using wheat-based macaroni).

1. In what applications can spelt flour be used as a direct substitute for all-purpose wheat flour?
2. 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.

First, I halved the recipe. I just can't eat 12 pancakes by myself, and don't have space for too many leftovers. I found that the batter was not thick enough after mixing, and added some extra spelt flour to thicken it up, which worked just fine (the extra 2-3 tbsp of flour that the recipe calls for are no joke). The batter poured fine, and the texture of the resulting pancakes was normal. No one would have known that these were made from spelt instead of wheat. Taste-wise, they were a little lacking, but that doesn't seem to be a function of the spelt. Were I to make these again, I would:

1. Increase the amount of sugar and cinnamon, and add some nutmeg (personal preference).
2. Use buttermilk instead of 2% milk. The recipe calls for milk in the ingredient list, but references buttermilk in the instructions. Considering that Alton Brown's recipe using buttermilk, I'm guessing that was the way to go.
3. Create a large batch of the dry mix, as Alton Brown suggests, and store it for up to 3 months to save time in the morning (which, for me, is the worst time to attempt the precise measuring of ingredients!).

Check back later for more culinary adventures with spelt: spelt macaroni and cheese (using spelt pasta elbows and a spelt roux), and spelt chocolate chip cookies.