In search of healthy and fun meals to feed my family, with an eye toward sustainable living.

Here you'll find recipes & ramblings about keeping my family fed with what's available in Alaska between local produce, a little bit of wild harvest, and the modern grocery store.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Bread w/ sprouted grain: Round 2

I broke down and bought a kitchen scale!
Can you believe it?
It's a cheap scale (not electronic) and I doubt that I will start weighing everything -- but for baking, at least, I want to get a better handle on the ingredients, so I'm turning into more of a German/scientist (your pick!) and am starting to actually weigh my ingredients...

SO, let's start with the sprouting: I used hard (winter) red wheat berries.
1 c berries (before sprouting) = 250 g
yield after 4-5 days was 3 c sprouted wheat (white tails, roughly the length of berries) = 400 g


I did not dry these, but that's what's needed in order to grind them if using a grain mill.
Instead, I took the sprouts and used my food processor, combining with 1 c sourdough.


I dissolved 1 t active yeast in 1 c water and 1 T sugar/honey, then added 1 c flour (King Arthur whole wheat, 150g) to form a sponge, waiting for 15-30 min for it to get nice and "bubbly". Then I added the food-processed sprout-sourdough mash (the 400g sprouts plus 1 c sourdough).

Now it's time for the rest of the flour (don't forget the 1 t salt -- best to add at the very end).
It took another 2.5 c of flour until I had a kneaded dough, still slightly sticky, but workable. And since I have a handy scale now, I can tell you that the final weight of my dough was 1340 g.

Rise until doubled, twice, then bake at 350 for about 45 min. May need longer -- internal temperature of loaf should read 200F.

Makes a nice moist bread, not too heavy. I'm guessing this to be around 1/3 sprouted, but to calculate that accurately, the sprouted grain should have been dried first. Stay tuned for another post on the subject.

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