December 4, 2016 - 2:54pm
Soaked grains v. Sprouted grains
Does anyone know the latest state of play between these two methods of preparing bread flour. By soaked grains I mean soaking grains in warm water, in an acid medium, or both.
It is much easier to soak grains than to sprout, dehumidify and grind. It is claimed that soaking leads to easier digestion of grains, increased availability of nutrition, neutralisation of phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors, and increased amounts of desirable enzymes, minerals, and many vitamins.
Are there any reliable reports explaining that of the two techniques one would gain materially from using the sprouting instead of the soaking approach for wholegrain flours such as wheat and spelt?
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Soaking leads to sprouting if the process of soaking is not stopped. So there is more "work" involved.
Try looking under cattle feed, sprouted v whole grain
or study on sprouted v whole grain wheat
the bran fully flake off in larger pieved when dried and milled into flour - this is called tempering Soaking for 24 hours and them grinding i to gruel is one way. I prefer to soak for 4 hours , sprout for 20 hours then dry at 105 f for 4 hours and then grins into sprouted four. I get all the benefits of sprouted gruel but the bread comes out more like bread made with regular flour.
I am very interested in this subject the the chemistry involved i.e. phytate nutralization and the acid medium you mentioned. I have tried making a mother in the past and letting the dough rest over night in the fridge before adding the rest of the flour and the salt, which is held back during the time in the fridge to give the yeast a good start. I forget the lingo for this technique but it became part of my stretch and fold routine to better develop the gluten. Like you, I got a bit frustrated because I wasn't achieving the results I wanted.... lighter more airey and elastic [chewy] bread.
The best `looking' 100% WW breads were done with sourdough cultures. Also Desum bread may interest you. It's another cultured sour dough kind of bread but the culture is begun in a 10 lb. can of Organic whole wheat beries. Some of which are ground and mixed with a little water. The natural yeasts living on organic grains does the rest. But the care and feeding of the mother generates way too much MOTHER. I don't often enough to keep the mother healthy. Wheat water salt is all that.s in Desum bread. Great flavor! I learn of it on this forum.
Ron
"the care and feeding of this method generates way too much MOTHER..."
There is nothing about desem process which requires enormous amounts of mother. Just like liquid sourdoughs or stiff pain au levain, you can keep a tiny 10-20g desem starter in the fridge and build it up each week into the full levain. If anything, it a more efficient process because unlike the "tartine process" you don't throw any starter away. In fact, I use a desem chef as my chef for all kinds of sourdough sponges.