Sprouted-Wheat Bread - Fat-Free and Delicious!

Wheat is a wonderfully nutritious grain on its own, but you can supercharge the nutrition in wheat by sprouting it.  As seeds sprout they convert the latent starches to sugars in order to feed the budding plant.  The result is that breads and other foods made from sprouted grains are significantly higher in protein, vitamins and enzymes, and the complex starches are converted into natural sugars.  If you ever had to live off your stored grains and legumes sprouting them first would be beneficial.  For instance, because of the production of vitamin C sailors used sprouted grains and beans to prevent scurvy.  Also, when you make bread with sprouted grains the taste is improved (a bit sweeter) and the consistency is simultaneously light and chewy.  It's good food that is good for you. 

Sprouted grains have been used to make bread for centuries.  The Essenes, a ascetic Jewish sect that flourished between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D (they were contemporaries of the Pharisees and Sadducees), are credited with the original technique for making bread from sprouted wheat.  Their recipe was essentially to sprout the wheat, mash it, and set it in the sun to slow cook into a kind of flat-bread.  The slow-cooking certainly preserved more of the vitamins and minerals than we do with oven cooking today, but even our modern oven-cooked sprouted bread is healthier than un-sprouted bread.

Here's how to make sprouted-porridge and fat-free-sprouted-wheat bread:

Sprouting the wheat:

• 3 cups Whole Wheat
• 6 cups Water

Mix the wheat and the water in a container and leave it to soak overnight.  In the morning pour into a colander to drain the water and rinse (some people keep the drained water to use in soups etc. since it contains nutrients).  Put the rinsed wheat back in the container and leave it uncovered in a dark place.  Rinse and drain every six hours until tiny sprouts emerge.  You want them to be about 1/8 inch long.  Watch closely and don't let them get too long--see photo above-- because the optimum point of enzyme creation and nutrition is right after they sprout and before the new bud consumes much of the nutrients for its own growth.   The grain swells with all the soaking and rinsing--my 3 cups of wheat ended up being around 7 cups of sprouted grain.  

Making bread, cereal etc. from sprouted wheat:

Sprouted Porridge - For a nice hot cereal I took two of the cups of sprouted wheat, added two cups of water and blended it into a smoothie-like consistency, brought it to a boil, added salt to taste, and then simmered it until the consistency was like cooked oatmeal.  Delicious and nutritious.

Fat-Free Sprouted-Wheat Bread 

• 3 cups Sprouted Wheat
• 3 cups Water - luke warm
• 2 Tbsp Salt
• 2 Tbsp Yeast
• 1/2 cup Gluten (sometimes called "Vital Wheat Gluten")
• Whole wheat flour

Put the sprouted wheat and water in a good blender and blend thoroughly until you have a smoothie-like consistency.  Pour into the bowl of your bread mixer (or simply into a large mixing bowl) and add the yeast.  Add 6 cups of whole wheat flour, the salt, and the gluten and mix thoroughly.  Keep gradually adding and mixing flour until the dough is a soft-cohesive mass that springs back when you poke it.  Put it in a large bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rise on the counter until doubled in size.  Punch it down and divide it into four equal lumps of dough.  Form these by rolling out into a long rectangle then rolling it up tightly and sealing seam by pinching the dough together.  Put the loaves in 4 oiled loaf-pans and let raise until double, then bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 40 minutes.

This is a delicious, light but chewy sandwich bread that is nutritious and full of flavor.  Enjoy!