July 26, 2017 - 2:52am
sprouted buckwheat flour
We bought an absurdly expensive box of "Rude Health Sprouted Whole Buckwheat Flour organic" from Sainsbury's. The flavour was far better than the usual (much cheaper) buckwheat flour produced in Britain, and similar to the flavour of flour bought in Brittany direct from a miller, which had little black specks in it that were presumably the ground hull. By "sprouted" Rude Health presumably mean the same as "malted". Can anyone explain (a) why the sprouted buckwheat tasted so much better, and (b) why it approximated to the flavour of French (i.e. Breton) flour?
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(b) no idea. Sorry.
differences in flavour from what is the same basic grain type, including the particular strain of that grain, the nutrient profile of the soil it was grown in, the weather while it was growing, the method of milling, how long it aged after milling, etc. etc.
Even using exactly the same grain from the same field, you are going to have a flavour change from using a whole, milled and unsifted (so including the bran, germ, and endosperm) version, using a version where the bran and germ have been sifted out (creating a "white" flour), a version with some of the germ and bran added back in and that has sat for a while and the oils are starting to head towards rancid, etc, etc.
One way to get a major flavour change in a grain is to sprout it, which means taking whole grains and moistening them, and letting them break open to a certain length of sprout growth. This sprouting means that the grain itself and its associated enzymes and bacteria have started the process of breaking down the starches of the grain in to sugar. This makes the grain more digestible for humans (since our body doesn't have to do as much break-down to use the energy), and makes the overall flavour sweeter (we can taste the released sugars). What is sold as a "sprouted grain" is this stage that is then dried at room temperature to halt the growth. If sold as "sprouted grain flour", then it is milled and sifted the same as non-sprouted grain. The additional time, energy, and labour involved in the sprouting means that this will bear a higher price tag.
Taking it a step farther, a miller can take the sprouted grains and "malt" them. This involves drying / roasting them in a kiln up to a certain temperature / colour / flavour range. A "base" malt is still diastatic, where the temperature has not exceeded 150 deg F and where the enzymes are still operational. Once heated past that point, the enzymes are no longer active, but the roasting starts the process of caramelizing the sugars, causing increasingly darker colour and an increasingly sweeter and more complex flavour. Malted grains are used in small quantities as flavouring agents, and are considerably more expensive than plain grains.
A standard bread or all purpose or plain flour that is sold as "malted" generally contains a small portion of "base" diastatic malt, so that the natural enzymes of the grain (which are mostly stripped off during the milling process) are added back in to contribute to the breakdown of the starches in to usable sugars (which feed the yeast for better rise, and which make the overall flavour sweeter).
So - your usual local buckwheat flour is just the basic grain that has been milled and sifted. If there are no darker specs, then it is likely that they have removed all of the bran and germ, and you are dealing with the buckwheat equivalent of plain flour. Chances are that the flour then ended up sitting around in the various areas between miller and your table, and so wasn't overwhelmingly fresh.
The buckwheat flour that you purchased in Brittany sounds like it included at least some of the bran (which will allow a more complex flavour), and obviously was fresh out of the mill. Those two features will make a difference in the flavour, and the different strains and growing conditions there would contribute as well.
The sprouted flour will have the whole grain, and will have some of the starches already broken down, so will have an overall sweeter and more complex flavour. The higher cost reflects the increased production needs (and the premium that a lot of people will pay for the "healthiness").
You are the only one who can decide whether the flavour difference is worth the price difference.
Thank you. Very helpful and informative.
I've been using it in the flour mixture I'm developing. How have you been using your sprouted buckwheat flour? What differences, if any, have you noticed?
I've noticed a mild sweetness that is lovely. I'm slowly increasing the percentage mixed in to the flour.
Hadster
I find buckwheat is better hand-made (my wife's hands) than from a bread-making machine. She used 50% buckwheat and the rest wholemeal. Next time it will be buckwheat and strong white. We add gluten to make it rise better. We bought it in Sainsbury's which is much cheaper than on the Internet, strangely. I didn't notice the sweetness, but I did find the buckwheat taste much stronger than Dove's buckwheat, which seems to be the only other brand widely available in Britain. It tasted much more like the flour bought at a street market in Brittany direct from the miller, which contained some bran. I think all British-milled buckwheat has been sifted to remove the bran (and thus the taste), and is sold for people with wheat allergy, not for people who love the flavour of buckwheat. So it seems that if we can't get flour with bran in it, sprouted is the next best thing.
IceDeme,
If you're interested, visit the Whole Grain Council website, and search Buckwheat. That is reassuringly informative, and clears up questions concerning the integrity of buckwheat products.
Thank you. This seems to solve the problem: "Although most often seen as white with small dark brown/black speckles (as shown here), buckwheat flour can also be either uniform soft white or uniform pale tan in color. The difference comes from how coarse or fine the grind is, and whether or not the buckwheat groats were from green buckwheat or the more common black buckwheat." The photo shows the little black specks which the best flour (other than sprouted) contained.
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