make your own diastatic malt
Make you own diastatic malt
You can make your own: sprout a cup of wheat berries by covering
them with water in a jar for 12 or so hours, dump out the water &
rinse with clean water, and place the jar in a darkish, warmish,
place. Rinse the berries every day with clean water and return to
their place.
In 2-3 days they will begin to sprout. When the sprout is as long as
the berries themselves, dump them out on paper towels, dry them off,
and set on a cookie sheet in the sun for a day or so to dry out. Then
put the cookiesheet in a 100F oven for an hour or three. Do not let
the temp get above 130F or the enzymes will be destroyed.
Then grind the dried malted berries into flour, and use it in your
favorite recipe at a rate of approx. 1t. per loaf.
I am new to this blog but I also could not find any diastatic malt in AL, so I search the internet and happened to find a web site to make your own diastatic malt. I did not saved the web address but I did copy the recipe and I did follow the direction and make my own diastatic malt. I hope it will help some of you to make your own diatatic malt. I sprout 1/4 cup of wheat berry instead of 1 cup and grounded it and store in the freezer.
Siuflower
Comments
Siuflower,
That's an interesting process for making your own diastatic malt. Re: sources, I know for sure King Arthur sells diastatic malt powder, I have purchased it from their on-line store along with French flour and gluen.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Isn't diastatic malt usually malted barley. Barley has a much higher Diastatic Power (DP), meaning, it will convert more starch to sugar per amount used.
Yes, you can order it from KA, but I don't use diastatic malt in all my baking, only when the recipe asked for it. It will take me a long time to use up 1 lb. it make more sense for me to make a small amount to keep it fresh. I made 1/4 cup of wheat berry two months ago and I only used 2 tsp and still have plenty left for the future.
There are two kinds of malt, wheat and barley. The barley mostly for making beer and the wheat malt is I used for baking. I think you can use either one for baking. I think you can make barley malt following the recipe.
Couldn't find diastatic malt. Did find barley berries, get this, in Austria (a direct translation from the box) the grain is labeled: "Naked Barley." Grown right here in the "backyard" so to speak.
This is an old variety with lots of Beta-glucan. Let the sprouting begin!
Mini, your 'naked barley' comment got me thinking. I was trying to work out why it would be called that and it was only when I got to making my own this week that I discovered why.
I searched far and wide for barley seed (never though that it would be that difficult to find) and eventually found some at a garden shop which had a health food section. There is plenty of roasted barley around (used to make barley tea) but that is no good as it definitely ain't going to sprout anymore.
I followed the method used in this video. (It is worth watching for the background music alone).
On day two, I bit a sprout open to test its tenderness. Inside it was soft and sweet but I was left with a woody husk in my mouth. It was then that it dawned upon me that you had bought 'hulled barley'. So I was left with the problem of how to remove the husks without wasting too much. I used a sieve as suggested in the video but that only removed the little rootlets. I had a fair amount of success rubbing the dried barley between my palms but I still had to separate the grain from the husk. I experimented with putting a small amount into a bowl with water. I was hoping the lighter husks would float and that the grain would sink but now that the grain had been dried, everything floated. In the end I ground everything up and passed it all through two sieves (first a coarse one and then a very fine one). It removed 90% + of the husk but it was rather laborious.
Does anyone have any better ideas.?
In the meantime I have found some hulled barley but the woman who sold it to me said that not all of it would sprout as quite a few of the grains had received mechanical damage in the hulling process. It will probably entail me picking over the whole lot and sorting out the good grain from the bad. It also doesn't resolve what I am going to do with the kilogram of whole barley seed I now have and don't want to waste.
It the meantime, it has taken me five days and for all that effort I only have 53g of diastatic malt. I am definitely going to give it another shot and will post again if I come up with any bright ideas.
One more question for anyone who is listening: Where should I keep my 53g stash of diastatic malt now that I have made it. I don't want it to go rancid after all that work. Should I keep it in the freezer? Or will that damage the enzymes? How about the fridge? Or in a dry place?
Syd
I also have 20g coarser malt flour in the kitchen and it is still good, but I'm not in the tropics like you are!
"It will probably entail me picking over the whole lot and sorting out the good grain from the bad."
--check out when I rolled the matts of roots over, the unrooted ones just fell out.
About those extra seeds, when you're done malting... Have you got some empty window boxes? Plant a pot or two with some grain, about one seed every 3 cm. You can also cook some whole grains in the rice cooker and then add it to your dough or eat or blend with rice or soups.
I've seen that video link... I've been there before! I didn't like the ceramic pots and preferred to rinse them again in trays to keep them fresh.
Mini
Thanks, MIni. You're such a help. I ill pop it in the freezer right away. I like the window box idea, too. :)
Syd
Update: found this on Wikipedia. Those of you who have been following this thread might be interested.
Syd
does rye have a high diastatic power too? amylase activity in ordinary rye flour seems to be storming already ;)
I wanted to try it in my kaiser rolls and baguettes and see if it made any difference.
Barley has higher diastatic power than rye but either one or the other can be used. They do have slightly different properties. Rye being more variable and sometimes more complicated. Read more here: http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue1.3/hayden.html
A quote from that link: "Further, rye malts tend to be richer than barley malts in alpha amylase, although barley malts provide slightly higher diastatic power."
The naked barley is soaking up water now for 6 hours, I will drain and rinse it and let it rest in my colander overnight. Rinse again in the morning. Is it my imagination or does that one granule (middle, slightly lower from the center) in my picture look like another grain?
Mini
as usual you are a goldmine of useful informations. The link you inserted contains a trailing whitespace that shows as %20 in the linked url.
According to a document I found somewhere (I don't remember where) the roots need to be as long as the berry in order to get a complete maltization. Can anyone confirm?
P.S. sprouted grains are delicious to eat! If not else than for this reason the sprouting is worth the time it takes.
Nico, here's the link again...
http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue1.3/hayden.html
I read that too about drying the sprouts when as long as the berry. But I'm still looking around. On the above link the drawing is not so long as the body. Here are mine after 12 hours overnight (6 hour soak first) with just the beginning of a root.
So cute! They must warmly plunk Mother Nature's heart strings!
Mini
From what I understand, the seeds put out rootlets, these are not what we want. We want the sprout that is growing inside the seed and the only way to check on the growth is to cut a germinating seed open and look inside. When the sprout inside is the length of the seed, then it is ready to dry. The rootlets are removed as their taste is not desired. It takes anywhere from 6 to 8 days.
It is important that the seeds stay moist by rinsing often and well aired, so not too packed together.
Drying is done low temperature. Grinding should also be done as cool as possible.
Ha! There is a better way! Today, Day 3, I observed that the outside of the seed is translucent and in this photo one can see the sprout extending up the side of the seed. Look at all those rootlets!
Now the question is: Stop when the sprout reaches the end of the seed or when it extends beyond the length of the seed the same length as the seed?
Mini
Stopped the growing. Rinsed and starting to dry using a fan. Some of the sprouts extend beyond the seed, same are the same length and some are like the photo above. Rootlets everywhere! I judge them to be ready to dry at 66 hours old, Day 4.
Mini
for letting me post this here. I thought it fitting to keep the sprout info together. Thank you again,
Mini
generally rye, wheat and lentils sprout much faster: 2-3 days, even in winter. Maybe it's a peculiarity of barley...
The water I rinse them with is slightly warmer than room temp. I placed them in sprout trays and put them into the oven on a rack. I removed the rack for rising placing everything over the sink. Then run water into the trays. They drain into the sink and when all the water has run off, they go back into the cold oven with the door shut. Worked well and they were out of the way. If I needed the oven, all I had to do was stack them.
The bulk doubled in size overnight each time. I layered the seeds about 1cm deep in the trays when they were 30 hours old. When I flipped them out this morning they were like round matts. So I laid them upside down on parchment -- roots in the air!
I did have them outside first but they started to green. So I've got them in a dark room over the oven rack and suspended that up off the table and parked a ventilator in front of it. The little rootlets are shriveling up. The seeds without roots are falling out of the matts. (Better than pigeons for sorting!) Interesting "green" smell. There is quite a few sprouts to dry. I started out with 500g and wishing I had made less.
Mini
I guess I could have skipped the last rinse, that seemed to slow down the drying and they just kept growing. They did stop and I'm having a bugger of a time getting them dried without heat.
Today is the 6th day since I started and the 3rd day of drying.
Mini
Mini - How can i miss this thread? That's a lot of malted barley. I'm going to try again, small scale. Did you mill them all?
I know this thread has been dead for about 5 years, but for anyone who happens to look, cant you just make Diastatic Malt by grinding 2 Row Malt (that would be the barley used for beer.) from your local Home-brew store?
Active malt will be light in colour and not dark or roasted. What is 2 row malt? (always wanting to learn...) :)
Careful asking me a beer question, I'll fill up the thread with worthless data.
6 Row and 2 Row are your major base malts for making beer (for any other homebrewer that reads this, please note I said major, not only) and are light in color and highly diastatic. The designation of six-row and two-row comes from the habit of how the florets are arranged on the pedicel, creating the appearance of six-rows or two-rows of seeds in each head. To make them is a 4 Step process.
Steeping - The first step in malting is steeping. In this stage, the moisture content of the barley is increased from the 12–13% moisture present in barley seed to the 42–46% required for germination to proceed.
Germination - During the second stage of malting, germination, the roots and shoot emerge from the kernel. Inside the kernel, the production of enzymes proceeds and the hard interior endosperm of the grain is broken down.
Drying and Kilning - Once the malt is fully modified, it is dried immediately and then cured at high temperatures. These are the final two steps of malting
"...dried immediately and then cured at high temperatures.
That last bit is the killer of enzymes, so the 2row malt is non-diastatic (without diastase). (I was thinking the 'row' had something to do with grain head.) So if the sweetener is desired without the enzymic action, then yes, use it and grind it up to your utmost pleasure. I remember seeing about half a kilo already ground into powder in the Trail, BC wine club/shop. It was amber in colour. Passed on purchasing as I use more of the active stuff. I'm still using malt from this first batch, 5 yrs down the road!
My husband came home the other day with a second ugly baguette. My, oh my, his standards are low... and so is the store's. I'm too critical! it was too dense, under-proofed and poorly slashed not to mention pale. Did they put up a sign at the store? "student baker, half price!" i was thinking of throwing it back into a hot oven or grill. (Nothing written on it -- ooo, art project! Pale baguette with printed crust instructions!) It just lies there in the kitchen, still unwrapped in it's paper/cellophane bag slowly drying out begging for mercy. Bread crumbs? Croutons? Baseball bat? Casserole? Crisps?
We have been having a lot of ups and downs in temp so those watching the rise are obviously watching the clock and not the bread. That particular day, down to 12°C in the wee hours. OK, it's summer and the heat has been high for the past few weeks, and it's a good time to experiment when everyone is on holiday but... A little active malt might have been what was needed to kick the dough into action with fall temps coming on. Can't help but think it was already in there...
Thanks for the info, it's really hard to find much about diastatic malt out there. On a side note, you can't make bread with 2 Row flour, you wind up with a crumb that's Very gummy and gooey; unless you cook the loaf until it turns into hardtack.
I can't make bread from a 2 row flour? I seriously think I could give it a good try. Probably already have at least mixed fifty fifty with wheat flour. Pretty low in gluten (but when has that stopped me?) Would be a good idea to denature some of that flour. Too many enzymes are not good for bread either. I keep the amounts small, about 5 to 7g for 500g flour.
Two-row, we're talking barley grain, grown in Europe, right? And 6 row grown predominantly in North America.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/differences-2row-6row.html
Hm, I can see conflicts of opinion already. Need less 6 row than 2 row for the same amount of amylase.
Actually I meant using it straight, I already use about 1/2 Tbs in most of my breads, and seem to get the properties that everyone says they get with diastatic malt.
Back to the reattack on the 2-Row / 6-Row
Was looking for a place to purchase the Diastatic Malt without spending an arm and a leg, and came accross this: If germination continued, a plant would grow, and all of the starches that the brewer hoped to use would be used by the plant. So, the maltster gauges the germination carefully and stops the process by drying when he judges he has the proper balance between resources converted by the acrospire and resources consumed by the acrospire.
The purpose of malting is to create these enzymes, break down the matrix surrounding the starch granules, prepare the starches for conversion, and then stop this action until the brewer is ready to utilize the grain. After modification, the grain is dried and the acrospire and rootlets are knocked off by tumbling. The kiln drying of the new malt denatures (destroys) a lot of the different enzymes, but several types remain, including the ones necessary for starch conversion. The amount of enzymatic starch conversion potential that a malt has is referred to as its "diastatic power".
From a brewer's point of view, there are basically two kinds of malted grain, those that need to be mashed and those that don't. Mashing is the hot water soaking process that provides the right conditions for the enzymes to convert the grain starches into fermentable sugars. The basic light colored malts such as pale ale malt, pilsener malt and malted wheat need to be mashed to convert the starches into fermentable sugars. These malts make up the bulk of the wort's fermentable sugars. Some of these light malts are kilned or roasted at higher temperatures to lend different tastes e.g. Biscuit, Vienna, Munich, Brown. The roasting destroys some of their diastatic power.
The diastatic power of a particular malt will vary with the type of barley it is made from. There are two basic varieties of barley, two row and six row - referring to the arrangement of the kernels around the shaft. Two row barley is the generally preferred variety, having a bit higher yield per pound, lower protein levels, and claiming a more refined flavor than six row. However, six row has a little higher diastatic power than two row. Historically, the higher protein level of six row barley (which can produce a very heavy bodied beer) drove brewers to thin the wort with unmalted grains like corn and rice. Brewers were able to take advantage of six row barley's higher diastatic power to achieve full conversion of the mash in spite of the non-enzymatic starch sources (adjuncts).
Besides the lighter-colored base and toasted malts, there is another group of malts that don't need to be mashed and these are often referred to as "specialty malts". They are used for flavoring and have no diastatic power whatsoever. Some of these malts have undergone special heating processes in which the starches are converted to sugars by heat and moisture right inside the hull. As a result, these malts contain more complex sugars, some of which do not ferment.
Looking on the northernbrewer.com website, it lists Rahr 6-Row Malt with a Diastatic Power of 160 (2-Row comes in at 140). So I'm backing to think that grinding it into flour will make a Diastatic Malt. I have to wonder what the "Power" rating of King Arther Diastatic Malt would come in at.
Your thoughts?
So me NEVER having made a loaf of bread in my life, but having made ALOT of beer in my life, I think you are on the right track MiserDD. I am at least convinced enough that for my first loaf, I'm just going to crush my barley and use it as the diasatic malt powder.
You may have mispoke a little when you had said "cured at high temperatures" as the kilning process is very different between the different varieties of malts. For all your light malts, i.e. 2-row, 6-row etc... the kilning process can be only at like 150-180 degF (depending of source). This is intentionally done so that the grain does maintain as much of its enzymatic/diastatic power as possible. I'm sure it kills a hand fulll of ensymes, but alpha and beta amylase are supposed to stay intact which likely is the important ones for bread (again, having never made bread... beer is essentially liquid bread though right?)
anyways, wish me luck