Ezekiel Bread Making

I was given a recipe and the grain mix to make some 'Ezekiel' bread. 

The recipe is taken from the Bible. The reference given is Ezekiel 4:9, which says:

"Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof."

They missed one ingredient though - which is mentioned later in Ezekiel 4:12,

"And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight."

He complains about that and God lets him use cow dung instead. 

Anyway - some other additional items are: Oil and Honey, yeast and salt. 

The official recipe is:

2 1/2 cups hard red wheat

1 1/2 cups spelt or rye prefered

1/2 cup barley (hulled barley)

1/4 cup millet

1/4 cup lentils (green is preferred)

2 Tbs great northern beans

2 Tbs red kidney beans

2 Tbs pinto beans

Stir in the above very well and grind in flour mill. 

Thankfully the above bit was done for me. It probably would have taken a while to collect all those grains and mill them...

The rest is:

4 cups hot water

1 cup honey

1/2 cup oil

2 tsp salt

2 Tbs powdered yeast

In a large bowl, combine water, honey, oil and salt. Add all of the flour and yeast. Stir or knead until well kneaded for 10 minutes. This is a batter type bread and will not form a smooth ball. 

Pour dough into greased pans. You may use 2 large loaf pans (10"x5"x3" or 3 medium loaf pans or 2"-9"x 13" brownie pans. Let rise in warm place for one hour or until the dough is about 1/4" from the top of the pan. DO NOT OVER RISE. If it rises too much it will over flow the pan while baking. Bake at 350 deg F  for 45 to 50 mins for loaf pans. 35 to 40 mins for brownie pans. 

For variation fruits and nuts can be added. 

OK - so this is what happened:

I gathered all the ingredients. I was kindly given the grain - so the only expense was the honey and the oil and the yeast (close to $15 worth). I had to lay out a fair amount of 'dough' for this bread. 

I wonder if bread could be the next status symbol?  Forget bling - I want to see your bread...

Anyway... the other expense was the bread tins. Probably worth having anyway. These cost about $12 for the two - which was pretty cheap actually. They are a little larger than was recommended. They work out to be 5" by 9" by 2.5" deep. 

So the start up cost was about $27 - which is a lot of 'bread'. 

I have enough oil and honey and yeast to make several batches though.

So - the first thing I did was shove all the ingredients in a large bowl. I only used half the ingredients as I only had two tins (this mixture should be enough for four 8"x4" tins so I am told). My tins are close enough...

I don't have a mixer - so it was manual mixing for 10 minutes. I had to alternate arms in the end - it was hard work. If I did buy a mixer - the start up cost could have been in the hundreds of dollars. If I also had to mill the grains - then we are talking serious money...

Anyway - hand mixing seemed to work ok for me. 

Looks like oat meal. It was thick and hard to mix. 

I then slapped it into some tins. this seemed tricky as it was so thick. The instructions said 'pour' the mixture in. Erm - it was like hard to get it off the spoon. I literally slapped the mixture off the spoon into the tin. The lumps that I managed to throw into the tin did seem to gel together with some encouragement from my spoon. 

I started pre-heating the oven as soon as the mixture was in the tin. The instructions say an hour to rise, but I was told that it may take 10 mins if I used really hot water. I put the tins on top of the hob to soak in some of the heat from the oven. The bread did not rise as much as I was hoping. I must have waited 20 to 30 mins, but it seemed to reach a point and stop. 

As you can see - the pans look hardly full at all. 

Rising helped a bit...

So after nearly 3o mins of waiting (on the now hot hob) I figured that the bread had reached the peak. It was just over a thumb away from the top - so I put them in the oven. 

Here is an oven shot - for what it is worth...

After about 45 minutes I was getting a little uneasy as it looked like it was getting burnt. 

I then took them out. 

It looks like a disaster as it does not appear to have risen at all. Well maybe, but it tasted OK and did not seem to be doughy or anything. 

The bread was quite sweet actually. It was almost like a cake. I liked it toasted. 

I skipped the dung that Ezekiel used and went for the jam instead. I have since tried marmalade on the toasted bread and it is pretty good I must say. Overall this was a good experience. 

Plenty of protein in this bread  and quite filling. Two slices seems plenty of food for a snack.

Not sure what I would do differently next time. I may try and leave it to rise for longer to see if it actually rises any more than this batch. I certainly want to add some dried fruit and maybe some walnuts?

I may have to order a load of the grains and get some milling equipment.