Sprouted Bread

Anyone make sprouted bread from whole grains? Please share your recipes, tips and/or favorite grains, fruits, spices and seeds. If you'd like to get started, I follow this wonderful video, "How to Make Sprouted Bread!" and the results are really great:

I used to sprout red hard wheat. I would do about 1 gallon of grain at once. The sprouting time was easy. I always struggled with the drying part of it.
Being that i do not want to using a propane oven for 12 hours on 150*F. I have tried to dry them near the wood stove and also in the sun.

Being on the west coast where we do not see sun for weeks. This makes for trying to dry 1 gallon of wet grain on the wood stove. Not FUN!

I would love to have a better system for making and storing sprouted grains!

Using a dehydrator would be an option however we have very little power coming in to actually use that option.


So i all honesty unless it is summer time i have a hard time making sprouted grains for storage.


For now i usually just soak flour which i just ground up. I add some apple cider vinegar and wait about 24 hours before i use it.

Jordan, you just gotta carve out 30 minutes and watch the video! Sprout then pulverize into dough, bake, done.
No rational person who can sprout would dry the grain then grind it into flour. Sprouted flour is just a way for industrial food processors to add shelf life to a new product line. Grain can easily be stored on the shelf until it's time to sprout.
Unlike the juicer approach in the video, I use a meat grinder to process the grain. The other steps I follow to the letter. Really a fun process!

Amy Gardener wrote:Jordan, you just gotta carve out 30 minutes and watch the video! Sprout then pulverize into dough, bake, done.
No rational person who can sprout would dry the grain then grind it into flour. Sprouted flour is just a way for industrial food processors to add shelf life to a new product line. Grain can easily be stored on the shelf until it's time to sprout.
Unlike the juicer approach in the video, I use a meat grinder to process the grain. The other steps I follow to the letter. Really a fun process!

Hey amy

I am aware of the approach in the video.

What was nice about having dry sprouted grain in stock was if we wanted to make some cookies we could make them with the sprouted grains we had stored. We didn't need to wait the two days +/- it takes to sprout the grains than make the cookies.

Do you see the advantage?

Especially in a house where people do not want to plan a day ahead for the food prep. Some people want something right in the moment.
So having an already sprouted and dried grain ready for baking was quite nice. Just time consuming!

I really do love sprouted grain!

You are right that having the dried sprouted grain on the shelf is handy. I'll have to curb my enthusiasm for the sprout-to-grinder-to-oven method!
Do you follow a particular recipe for your sprouted bread? Any tips?

jordan barton wrote:.

What was nice about having dry sprouted grain in stock was if we wanted to make some cookies we could make them with the sprouted grains we had stored. We didn't need to wait the two days +/- it takes to sprout the grains than make the cookies.

Maybe you could freeze the moist sprouted grain in the right portions for various recipes. You'd still have to defrost before using, but it's a lot quicker than sprouting.

I don't have an oven, so I make fermented pancakes instead of bread. I often start by sprouting grain. Then I run it through my blender with water to make a batter, which I ferment on the counter for a couple days. Sometimes I make a large amount o use over a few days.

Still nothing as convenient as dry sprouted flour, but maybe something like that could work for you.

Breadmaking newbie here! So this method does not use any yeast? I assume the grinding and kneading parts of the process introduce enough air in the dough, right?

Hi P Cusco,

Some yeast is still needed in most recipes. It may be quite a small amount of instant or active dry yeast in a fairly wet dough, with 12 hours or more of fermentation, or the yeast may be in the form of sourdough that’s used, fed, and kept.

The yeast in the dough “exhales” carbon dioxide throughout the mass of dough. The network of gluten fibers, developed and strengthened by kneading (or perhaps long fermentation and folding) hold all those little exhalations and so the mass rises.

Happy exploring,
LS

Thank you very much for the video Amy. I’m now looking forward to trying to make some of our own sprouted bread.

P Cusco brings up a really important point about air in the bread. Wild yeast will naturally go to the sugars in the sprouted grain. Time is needed for the wild yeast to seek and eat and expel gasses to bubble up a bread. The bread in the video doesn't employ fermentation time so the bread is naturally sweet and chewy without much air: a dense moist bread.
Jan White ferments her pancake batter. I hear wild yeast + time. I would love to know if Jan adds a sourdough starter to the pancakes as the bubbling agent or some other leaven. Please share your recipe or method Jan!
Laura Stonehenge uses dry yeast for the digestion of the sugars and gas production. I'd love to hear more about this entire process.
Longer fermentation leads to more bubbles (until the sugars are eaten and the dough gasses out). The more fermentation, the less sweetness.
Lots of options so please keep sharing your knowledge and questions.

Well, part of the problem might be doing a whole gallon at once. But my favorite free and easy solar dryer is the back window of my black car. Whatever I'm drying: herbs, flowers, or sliced fruit (recently I dried sprouted lentils too), I simply place a single  layer on one side of a tea towel, fols the other side over to protect from dust, and leave in the back window for a couple days, checking and fluffing or turning occasionally. Makes the car smell good. A great conversation piece with strangers in the parking lot, and you can offer them a semi-dried piece of strawberry, for instance, and do some great do-it-yourself outreach.

I've not done any, myself - yet. But, I've been buying sprouted flour, recently, and it doesn't make me sick, like conventional flour, so, this is what I'm likely to do, when I really want bread. Since we normally try to live a keto lifestyle, and plan for 'carb-up' days, I'll probably only sprout a little at a time, because our freezer space is reserved for necessities only. But, it's a new venture for me, and one that will have to wait until January. I am really looking to try it!

Amy, have you been doing it long? Do you have any tips, or are you simply asking to learn?

Thanks for asking, Carla! Yes I have been making simple sprouted bread for about 5 years. For some time before, I sprouted mung beans, fenugreek, mustard, alfalfa and other veg sprouts. The freshness really appeals to me, especially in winter. I’ve made beer for years using the author Stephen Harrod Buhner’s book, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation. Instead of malting barley, I wanted to sprout the native plants in my SW region, dry them, and make fermentable wort out of local plants. Not much luck with saltbush, rice grass, or mesquite. I wanted to integrate what I learned from beer making and sprouting into bread making. Then I found the video posted above. I am happy with the sprouted wheat bread and the tips offered (cinnamon, grinding dried fruit with the grain, poppy seeds as the non-stick, cooling in a bag). I also want to venture out into other dry land grains and make savory breads. I’ve had some luck making sprouted Ethiopian injera with millet, teff, and wheat. Not bad but not really exceptional either. Sandor Ellix Katz’s recipe for sprouted Essene Bread is very flexible and helpful but I just can’t seem to make a really great loaf. I would really like some new recipes and flavor combinations to try.
Jan's pancake idea sounds like a great way to experiment without making a whole loaf. This small batch approach to exploring flavors seems really helpful and I plan to work with that.

Those are some great ideas and tips! You're so far out there, ahead of me, lol! I've been eating sprouted grain breads, but all I've sprouted myself, really, is micro greens and other salad type/size sprouts. A very long time ago, a friend used to sprout her own malt to powder, and turn milk shakes into malts, which I just thought was super cool, but it hadn't occurred to me, that if I do that, malts could be back on my menu!

Amy Gardener wrote:.
Jan White ferments her pancake batter. I hear wild yeast + time. I would love to know if Jan adds a sourdough starter to the pancakes as the bubbling agent or some other leaven. Please share your recipe or method Jan!

If I'm letting the batter ferment for only a day or two, I add some live vinegar to jumpstart things. Whether or not I get a fluffy pancake is a bit hit and miss. I use different combinations and proportions of grains and pulses all the time, which would have an effect on the end result. Plus there are probably other variables that I'm not paying attention to. So I always stir in a pinch of baking soda just before dumping the batter into the hot pan - just to make sure. Tmhis is the method I use almost always these days.

In the past, I've tried not adding vinegar and leaving the batter for longer to give more time for yeasts etc. to colonize. I don't know if it was necessary, but I always put it in a large bowl so the batter would have a larger surface area and more contact with air. I didn't add baking soda to those batches, but I also cooked them like dosas, making them thin and crispy, rather than trying for thick fluffy pancakes.

I think I more prefer the flavour of the latter method, but my house is small enough that a big bowl sitting there for days is a bit of a space issue. Using the former method, I just have a mug of batter sitting there, which is much easier to work around. Maybe I need to experiment some more. A small mug might be just fine for longer ferments.

I feel a little bad when people ask me to share my process, cause I often don't have much of one. I'd like the takeaway from that to be that this stuff isn't that complicated and whatever you do will almost certainly produce something perfectly edible in some form. Then it's just a matter of tweaking things to find something that works best for you.  Did your bread end up being a brick? Well, slice it thin and rebake to make crackers. Troubleshoot and try again. Did your pancake crumble apart? That's okay - saves you from having to cut it into bite sized pieces 😆  Just alter your ingredient ratios or choices for next time. And so on.

Carla Burke wrote: A very long time ago, a friend used to sprout her own malt to powder, and turn milk shakes into malts, which I just thought was super cool, but it hadn't occurred to me, that if I do that, malts could be back on my menu!

You can buy malt powder from a brew shop, too. That's what I do. Anything you buy will have been sprouted, as that's just part of the malting process. It's all going to be barley, though... and definitely not low carb 😁

Amy, thanks for sharing that video!
I really need to try this. I used to bake an excellent minimal-knead semi-sprouted bread by adding mixed sprouted grains and seeds (whole) to a wheat flour/water/commercial dry yeast dough before the second rise. It was heavy and moist, a texture like a northern European rye bread,
I'd love to try a simple fully sprouted bread like this one. It looks far less work -- well, except for using the old hand mincer to grind the grains! -- and I could always add extra sprouted grains and seeds to the mix.

Thank you Jane. By the way, that crank-style meat grinder or "hand mincer" is what I use and it is really easy because the sprouted grains are so soft (much softer than meat). It is much easier to clean than a juicer. You have the perfect setup!

The texture of sprouted bread has typically seemed to “wet” to me.  It is oddly more enjoyable if I add 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.  

But pancakes is a different story.  I can make that work.  Time to experiment.  Thanks for the suggestion!

It's a great idea to do it in a meat grinder. how many passes does it take before it is milled into flour?

One pass and the freshly sprouted grains are extruded into dough.

Thank you so much Amy for sharing how you make the sprouted bread.
I can't wait to make some and I know it's going to be delicious.
Can a person freeze the dough or bread for later use if well wrapped?

Great question Cindy! I have no idea about freezing fresh sprouted bread. Maybe you could post a question on the author's YouTube channel, "Everything Homemade."  Or try freezing your sprouted bread and let us know how it changes the flavor and texture. Thanks in advance for sharing your forthcoming research Cindy!

The sprouted bread I buy is Ezekiel 4:9 (100% organic, no preservatives, no artificial anything), and they freeze it, and keep it that way, at the store. I don't see why it wouldn't work for homemade.

Hey Carla! I've always wondered and you might know, is there an actual sprouted bread recipe in Ezekiel 4.9? What are the ingredients? Thanks in advance for your forthcoming research!

No recipe, just an ingredients list - which I don't currently have access to. However, they make a flax seed bread, one that's very much a 7grain bread, a cinnamon raisin, tortillas, and I'm pretty sure I've seen bagels, English muffins, and hamburger buns.

Edited to add: ok, a very quick search provides this, and there is a 'recipes' section, on the site: https://www.foodforlife.com/about_us/ezekiel-49

I want to try this bread. Is it good as they say.

Thanks for the link, Carla! Wheat, barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt. I also read that the ancient baking method for sprouted bread in the Near East is a dung fire.

LOL, Amy, don't read Ezekiel 4:12!

Cooking fires using dried herbivore dung, especially cow, as fuel are still very common in many parts of the world. I understand they're smoky and give off a slow, low heat, very like the way you cook your sprouted bread.

That mix of grains and legumes looks interesting - I used to use barley and millet in my sprouted grain loaf. But I've never tried legumes, too. Do you think the chickpeas might need a longer soaking and sprouting time than the grains?

I'm chuckling a lot right now Jane!
Hey, I have no idea about using bean sprouts in sprouted bread, how long to soak and whether they need a hotter fire. But I have tried this wonderful recipe for soaking dried garbanzo beans then grinding them into falafel:
https://www.themediterraneandish.com/how-to-make-falafel/
This could be a great place to start reimagining beans in sprouted bread. Sounds like LOTS of experiments are in order!
Happy sprouting and improvising!

That's a fab recipe, Amy! Thanks so much for posting it. Now I know why I've never succeeded with homemade falafels!

I went looking for sprouted chickepeas, found this recipe for sprouted chickepea hummus that says like they need 3 days: https://nourishedkitchen.com/sprouted-hummus-recipe/ . That sounds about right.

So one would have to plan ahead for adding them to bread. I'm guessing that even sprouted, they may make mincing harder work. Back in my raw vegan days (still vegan, no longer strictly raw) I tried raw sprouted chickpea hummus once. A bit too raw tasting for me. The sprouted but unprocessed beans were still far firmer than cooked chickpeas.

Wow! Thanks for all these recipes and ideas everyone! I love sprouts, and have been sprouting just for snacks and toppings, but this is a way better way to be eating breads AND sprouts! I'm surprised I didn't know you could just sprout and grind... I guess I never thought about what is in a sprouted bread.

I have a great sprouting mix with fenugreek that I think would make a great bread, actually. I'll be curious to see if any of you have any success with beans and lentils.
Hmmm dreaming up a sprouted adzuki and honey bun... I think I'll have to do some experiments once all the holiday baking is done. Woah, anybody tried a sprouted shortbread?? I'll have to see what I can convince my husband to let me try lol

Please report back how your adventures worked out, Margaux!

Thanks so much Amy. I learned lots to try. Especially the squishing in a grinder or juicer. I have Celiac's. So your beautiful wheat is out. I have been grinding brown rice and lentils to make gluten free bread. Experimented with sprouting and grinding in the vitamix blender. Ok for dry grains. Not right texture with wet so I added rice flour
I made dry bricks! And slow cooking might make a difference. I find lentils sprout in just one day if the kitchen is warm, rice took 2. Going to try again with your methods.was surprised you didn't rest your bread before baking. it looked like a really nice texture.. all the gluten free recipes I have add xanthum, starch and eggs to give structure will try chia or flax instead.l look forward to more successful experiments thanks to you!

Diane, I've not done much gluten free baking, but the times I have, I've used flaxseed or psyllium husk - either work well as a binder in gluten-free mixes. It's best to get the actual husk with psyllium, the powders can give a gritty texture.  Chia seeds didn't seem to do the job.

If you don't mind a heavy, moist bread more like a Scandinavian rye bread, I found a buckwheat, sorghum, and millet mix worked well and produced a delicious bread. I've used those grains whole and sprouted in a multi-grain wheat bread, too, with good results. But I'm a very idiosyncratic baker - no recipes and unusual tastes!

Hey Diane! Thanks for your research on sprouting beans for bread. Sounds like you're using mostly sprouted beans in the blender, is that correct? Based on your experiments, I intend to use very few beans (a couple tablespoons of lentils). I have great luck with sprouted millet and sprouted brown rice and those could lighten up the "brick." Keep going with those experiments!