There is not a single Russian who is not familiar with Baton, we all grew up eating it and loving it. It was the opposite of the dark rye bread, which was eaten along with meals; batons were served with tea, and smothered with jams and honey.
Baton is slightly enriched (but not sweet, per se), white, scored, rounded loaf with fairly tight crumb and soft, slightly shiny crust. It’s normally made with commercial yeast and white bread flour.
My recipe uses all-purpose spelt flour, and is leavened naturally, which makes the bread so much more nutritious without affecting taste or texture. A wash of water/sugar/potato starch is used at the end to soften the crust, which is slightly crunchy at first. The starch wash (kissel) also gives it a nice sheen that the authentic batons are known for.
HOW TO MAKE RUSSIAN SOURDOUGH SPELT BATON BREAD
Ingredients
Sponge (or pre-ferment dough)
200g warm water
50g active sourdough starter (2-3 tablespoons)
250g all-purpose spelt flour
Main dough
50g water
250g flour
40g sugar
5g salt
30g butter, softened
Wash (optional)
100ml (1/2 cup) water
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon potato starch
Instructions
To make sponge (pre-ferment dough):
Whisk water and starter until starter is dissolved.
Add flour, mix well with a spoon.
Cover tightly; leave at room temperature for 6-10 hours, until very bubbly and airy.
To make main dough:
Add water to the Sponge. Add sifted flour, sugar and salt. Knead by hand, or with a dough mixer.
Add butter in small increments.
Cover tight, and leave at room temperature for 5-6 hours, until the dough doubles in size.
Transfer to flat floured work surface, and knead it by hand into a nice ball. You can divide the dough now if you want two boules.
Slightly flatten the dough with your hands or a roller on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Roll it into a sausage.
Place it seam down and allow to rest, covered with a towel, for 2 more hours. It will increase in size quite a bit again.
Score (I score with a bread knife using hand-saw-like motion). Sprinkle or spray with water generously, and bake in a pre-heated to 425ºF (220ºC) oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350ºF (180ºC) and bake 15-20 more minutes.
To make wash, combine 100ml (1/2 cup) water with 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of potato starch in a small sauce pan. Simmer until it thickens, about 10 minutes. Brush all the sides of the bread, including the bottom, generously. It will soften the crust, and give it a sheen.Â
Russian Sourdough Spelt Baton Bread
Ingredients
PRE-FERMENT
- 200 g warm water
- 50 g active sourdough starter
- 250 g all-purpose Spelt flour
MAIN DOUGH
- all Sponge
- 50 g water
- 250 g all-purpose spelt flour
- 40 g sugar
- 5 g salt
- 30 g butter softened
WASH (optional)
- 100 g water (1/2 cup)
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon potato starch
Instructions
MAKE SPONGE (PRE-FERMENT DOUGH)
- Whisk 200g warm water and 50g sourdough starter until starter is dissolved.
- Add 250g all-purpose Spelt flour, mix well with a spoon or stiff spatula.
- Cover tightly; leave at room temperature for 6-10 hours, until very bubbly and airy.
MAKE MAIN DOUGH
- Add 50g water to the Sponge.
- Add sifted 250g Spelt flour, 40g sugar and 5g salt. Add to the pre-ferment dough. Knead by hand, or with a dough mixer.
- Add 30g butter in small increments. Knead until dough is firm and non-sticky. Add extra flour, if needed.
- Cover tight, and leave at room temperature for 5-6 hours, until the dough doubles in size.
- Transfer to flat floured work surface, and knead it by hand into a nice ball. You can divide the dough now if you want two boules.
- Slightly flatten the dough with your hands or a roller on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Roll it into a sausage.
- Place it seam down and allow to rest, covered with a towel, for 2 more hours. It will increase in size quite a bit again.
- Score (I score with a bread knife using hand-saw-like motion).
- Sprinkle or spray with water generously, and bake in a pre-heated to 425ºF (220ºC) oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350ºF (180ºC) and bake 15-20 more minutes.
MAKE WASH
- Combine 100g (1/2 cup) water with 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of potato starch in a small sauce pan.
- Simmer until it thickens, about 10 minutes. Brush all the sides of the bread, including the bottom, generously. It will soften the crust, and give it a sheen.
13 comments
What a beautiful loaf of bread. I can’t wait to try the recipe. Thank you for sharing.
Sally
Thank you, Sally! Hope you enjoy it 🙂
The crust looks perfect!
Thank you so much, Adina!
This looks absolutely delicious. One thing I’ve never had much luck cooking is bread but I think I will have to give this one a go – it just looks amazing.
Thanks, Amber! I like that this baton recipe is fairly simple for a naturally leavened bread, and can be made with any all-purpose flour 🙂
What is the sour dough starter?
Sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water, fermented together for several days with regular additions of flour and water to create a bubbly batter that’s full of wild yeast and lactobacilli, which leaven (help rise) dough. Bakers yeast is commercially cultivated yeast, and sourdough starter culture is a natural, age-old way to give rise to breads. Here is a good tutorial on how to make sourdough starter from Nourished Kitchen.
There’s no way that those images are spelt flour. Definitely bleached wheat flour. Spelt would look quite a bit different. Slightly darker, with a more cumbly crumb.
All-purpose spelt flour, VitaSpelt in particular, is unbleached spelt flour with bran and germ removed. It is quite white, like most starches when all the fiber is removed. Whole grain spelt flour, on the other hand, is dark because its bran and germ are intact. My guess is you are talking about whole grain spelt.
Crumb has nothing to do with the type of flour, and is almost entirely dependent on a method of bread preparation. Flour and water bread would have an open crumb structure while breads enriched with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, would have a tighter crumb, and if you use water roux, you get different crumb yet again.
Hi Valeria,
I attempted to bake your baton recipe and failed. I wonder what I did wrong. This is my first attempt at spelt. So far I have been baking with einkorn. Since you bake with both, I was wondering if you could give me some tips on how the two are different? I used the white Vitaspelt flour. Unfortunately not organic, my Whole Foods was out of organic.
My baton came out grayer than on your photo. I used rye starter, which could be one of the reasons. I also have einkorn starter, so may be I should have used that? I think my einkorn starter is also the stronger of the two at the moment. It definutely makes a better einkorn bread.
It also didn’t rise enough or as uniformly. It has smaller bubbles on the bottom and bigger on top. I wonder if my dough was too thin, since it didn’t hold shape as well, but instead it spread.
I changed the steps a little. For the last proof I used a batard shaped bannetton with linen inside. And I used a large dutch oven to make steam for the first 15 min, since this is what I normally do.
Do you think this adversely affected my loaf? I might have also made things worse by spraying water on the loaf. It was already a little loose and spraying water on top of using a dutch oven was probably too much.
After taking off the dutch oven lid in 15 min, my baton was not yet browned at all and after 20 more minutes at 350F it was still very pale, so I upped the temp to 375F for 8 more minutes. That made it the right color, but the crust was super thick and crumbly.
I also wasn’t sure how thick the wash should be or how much to use. I used quite a lot trying to soften that crust,
The taste is still pretty good, a little sweet and reminding me of the original baton I ate as a kid, so I think it has a potential for kids sandwiches if I master it.
Also I wonder if you’ve ever mixed spelt with einkorn for this recipe or any other. Ideally I would like something that is still as nutritious/digestible as possible while catering to my kids american palates: soft crust, fluffy bread on a whiter side.
BTW, your cranberry kvass is the best!!!
Thank you,
Nataly,
Hi Nataly, sorry for the loooong delay in response, WordPress sent your comment into spam, I was cleaning and found it by chance! Every now and then it does that for some reason..
I have to say these photos came out a lot lighter in color than what it looks like in person, and also, it looks more grayish after it sits for a bit, but is very pretty and vibrant straight out of the oven. I actually notice that with all my spelt baking. And some batches come out lighter than others too, so go figure..
This is one of those recipes that I don’t use Dutch oven for, DO gives breads thick crispy crust that’s not what we want with baton. Spraying with water also causes the bread to crisp up. It would give it completely different texture. Remember how soft batons are on the outside? 🙂 Baking it on a tray is what keeps it soft..
Einkorn and spelt are very different in how they perform, spelt is a lot like regular wheat flour, it has a fair amount of gluten to give good rise and can make very soft baked things. Einkorn makes breads and pastries a lot more dense and low, for example if you use the same amount of spelt flour in a recipe as einkorn, the spelt bread will come out probably twice as big as einkorn. That’s why recipes in Einkorn cooking books have so much flour in them – to compensate for its inability to rise. That’s of course just the baking side of it 🙂 The health benefits of it are indisputable, as you probably know!
Hi Valeria, I come back from Russia and just tried your recipe of Russian Sourdough Spelt Baton Bread, really nice! I live in Nepal and here I can’t find spelt so I have mixed together whole-wheat floor and a little of refined floor and have to adjust a bit the timing. I’m going to try your Einkorn Sourdough Sandwich Bread. I would like to be able to make a light bread which I can use for sandwich. Can you please tell me if in those 2 recipes, the butter is compulsory or not?