Munchie Monday: Sprouted Wheat Bread

Sometimes it takes fewer than a dozen tries to have something work out well!  That is always so nice.  This second loaf of sprouted wheat bread came out quite well.  I started the wheat soaking on Thursday and made the bread on Saturday morning.

Two cups of white winter wheat were sprouted for this loaf.  When it got to the point of kneading the dough I let it knead in the stand mixer for 35 minutes.  I could see the gluten strings forming, which gave me a certain amount of hope for the bread!

It really looks like a loaf of bread.  I baked it for almost 60 minutes.  When I checked the internal temperature it was well over 210 degrees F. which means it was overcooked. It should have been pulled out at 200 degrees F. I was so happy with the appearance that I was not going to complain about the overcooking.

Here is that same loaf sliced.  It looks pretty good, doesn't it?!  It tastes good, too, though it is quite possible I forgot to put in the salt...oh, well.  With peanut butter and fresh strawberry jam on it, there are no people turning up their noses!

Sprouting Wheat

Bread is an addiction of mine.  I really love it.  I think my favorite breads are Lui Lui's crusty rolls dipped in their very flavorful olive oil (well, that is gone for the foreseeable future!), and garlic bread fresh out of the oven with lovely heavily garlicked butter greasing my fingers and tongue.  That, too, is on hold until the old body gets into reasonable condition.  Which will be a while!  Though progress is being made...!

Anyway, our daughter sent me a video on making bread from sprouted wheat.  Not bread from sprouted wheat flour, which is something I have made before, but bread from sprouted wheat.  That very night I put two cups of white winter wheat soaking.

The next morning this is what I saw:

See the little tiny white sprouts coming out the end of the kernels of wheat?!

This morning after watering the garden and harvesting tomatoes (which I had to pull out from under those horrid bugs that decimate almost perfectly ripe tomatoes...) and basil, I uncovered the sprouting wheat.  This is what I saw!--

Those baby sprouts are now toddlers!!  I am so thrilled.  Now it is time to get rolling on the bread but it will have to wait a while.  We are going on a junket so will make bread this afternoon in the heat!!!

UPDATE on the Zucchini counter pickles:  Robbie of Robbie and Gary Gardening in Southern California had made the pickles.  I had zucchini and followed suit.  She left hers to "work" on her counter for two days and mentioned maybe three days would be good.  Well, if three days is good, a week must be better.  Right?!  Totally wrong.  I opened them after a week and found nothing but mush.  Almost gagged me. Down the drain they went.

Since I don't learn very fast, I have some cucumber dill slices "processing" in the refrigerator...  Sadly, I did not make note of when I put them in the refrigerator (no counter time for these!) so am unsure about timing.  The recipe says one day to two weeks.  I guess I could check any time.  When I update with the bread situation I will pass along what happened to the dill slices.

Munchie Monday: Sprouted Wheat Sourdough Bread

Well, the sourdough starter was successful!!

This is what the starter looks like tonight after five days of daily feedings.  See the nice bubbles?!  That means the bugs are happy inside the starter.  I guess I can put it in the refrigerator now.

This morning I took a chance on the sourdough starter actually being in good working order because the sprouting wheat needed to be used.  Well, at least I thought it did.  Carolyn Robinson from New Zealand who has a YouTube channel gave me the inspiration.  That coupled with several other videos/speeches on how beneficial sprouted wheat flour is for our bodies as opposed to just regular whole wheat flour...well, I had to try it.

Having tried sprouting the hard white wheat in the past and being unsuccessful, I decided to look at it a different way.  I could only see a few tiny TINY maybe possibly white sprouts on a few grains of wheat, BUT it was all nice and soft looking so I decided it must be sprouted.  I did not dare let it sit out any longer, afraid of having it spoil.

So, I more or less followed Carolyn's plan:  I had put 1 1/2 cups of wheat berries in the quart jar and let them work all week.  This morning I rinsed them one last time and put them in my blender. I put in enough water to come less than one-quarter inch above the sprouts then let it blend until it was all a big old bunch of slurry.

After pouring the slurry into a large glass bowl I added 2 teaspoons of coarse salt, 1 teaspoon of molasses, and about 4 cups of flour.  I think Carolyn used a little less flour but I needed 4 cups...plus I was using white flour here because I did not have any more wheat ground. I will fix that tomorrow...Probably with whole wheat flour I would have needed less flour than the white.

After stirring this until it was well mixed together, I covered it with a clean cloth and let it rise for six hours.  It looked pretty good at 6 hours so I took out our "bun pans", sprayed them, then used the ice cream scoop to portion out the dough into each of the twelve wells, covered them and let them start rising for their next six hours.  About four hours into the rise, the power went out in a big thunderstorm!!  That was going to be a really big bummer if the bread was ready to bake but I could not get the oven started.  NOTE TO SELF:  buy matches so you can start the oven and the burners which all have electric ignition!!  Also lanterns. Also a generator.

After four hours the power came back on.  IMMEDIATELY I started the oven going then put the pans in the oven.  It turned out that they took no hurt at all.  I baked them at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes.

These are the rolls:

They are pretty good, if I do say so myself.  We will see how much difference the sprouted wheat made when I check my blood sugar in the morning!  I ate two and a half of these rolls.  With black raspberry all fruit jam on them.  I could probably have stood there and wolfed down another one or two of them but I managed to walk away.