Hi folks, I have a bag of sprouted light buckwheat flour which I haven’t used yet but I’m hoping to use to bake some sourdough bread. Given that this is a sprouted flour with active enzymes, how best to you think I should use this to its best advantage? I originally was thinking of using buckwheat with its low gluten as a soaker or scald. But given the activated enzymes from sprouting would the scald be a negative, would it deactivate the enzymes? Perhaps a warm soaker would be better to allow the enzymes to convert some of the starches into sugars?
I was also originally thinking of toasting the flour, but again I think the advantage of this flour having been sprouted would be lost. The high temperature of toasting would deactivate the enzymes.
Any advice from those familiar with this type of flour would be appreciated.
Benny
Toasting some for flavour and using a little untoasted in the final dough for its enzymes?
TBH i prefer to work with whole groats than buckwheat flour. That's because when I make buckwheat bread its 100% buckwheat and I think whole groats work better. I've made buckwheat groat porridge and then added it in a wheat sourdough which also makes delicious bread but as an add in the flour should work very well. Buckwheat is very tasty especially when toasted. In fact if one had only one choice then i'd say toast all the flour but you can have the best of both worlds.
Edit: Might be a nice idea to toast the buckwheat flour and then make it into a porridge.
I'm not sure the active enzymes are necessarily a key advantage unless you want to accelerate fermentation or compensate for a lack of diastatic malt in your dough.
Activating the enzymes meant that parts of the grain were processed by enzymes to produce food for the plant embryo. So just using sprouted flour means more of the grain has been preprocessed, delivering a sweeter and milder flavour and presumably making starches more available for yeast.
I grew up eating buckwheat, mostly in pancakes, and I love its earthy flavor. It's gluten-free and provides even less structure than rye, so I keep the percentage of buckwheat flour to 5 - 10% and increase flavor by adding toasted buckwheat groats. Toasting some of the sprouted flour would also increase the flavor. I usually make pan bread if I'm using a much higher percentage buckwheat flour.
Richard
It sounds like toasting and porridging it might be the way to go from the responses so far. Thank you for your opinions Abe, David and Richard.
Benny
Benny, I would agree with Abe. As a first try with it, I would go 15-20% BW toasted and then made into a porridge or scalded. Add in 10-15% WW to the final dough and will be a wonderful loaf.
Thank you Troy as well, I know you have baked quite a bit with buckwheat so this is likely what I’ll try for my first bake with it. I might go without the WW though just to get the taste of the buckwheat alone the first time.
Sounds good and hope you like it. It will give the dough a bit of a wet/slimy feel after mixing that will go away for the most part as gluten develops and you move through bulk.
Thanks for the warning about the dough feeling slimy, I think I’ll use the toasted buckwheat flour and add it as a Yudane. Fingers crossed for this weekend when I try it out for the first time.
Benny
🤞
When using buckwheat flour. That comes from the whole groats. However that gel is good as a binder to make up for the lack of gluten. That's why I prefer using whole groats when making a 100% buckwheat bread. Incorporating a yudane should help it regain that gelatinization which is what you want. When baked the gel actually gives the crumb a nice creamy texture.
Yes if I hadn’t received this bag of buckwheat flour I would have gone for the grouts, but since that is what I have I might as well use it and see if I like buckwheat.
You can always make pancakes. We've really enjoyed this tweaked recipe recently. Great flavour (although with dark buckwheat in my case) even without toasting anything.
Recipe 50% Buckwheat Pancakes
Batter will be thick and fluffy
Thank you David, I was just going to substitute 50% of the AP flour for buckwheat flour for the sour cream pancake recipe I usually make. But your recipe doesn't require any sour cream so I may try that one the next time we have pancakes.
Benny
Here’s what we had for dinner to test the buckwheat flour. I used the sour cream recipe that I usually use so I could compare how they taste.
12 pancakes
Ingredients
Instructions
They were very tasty, not sure I could taste the buckwheat so I can see how toasting the buckwheat flour to bring out the flavour would be a good idea.
The vanilla, sour cream and butter might crowd out the buckwheat.
My recipe was tweaked into lower hydration to produce fluffier pancakes, and uses neutral flavoured oil, which showcases atta flour or dark buckwheat nicely in flavour. On a griddle that is just barely wiped with a tiny bit of neutral oil, I get a fluffy pancake with a slight crisp to its outside.
EDIT: fresh ground allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg help fresh fruit shine and combine nicely with real maple syrup. Allspice with maple syrup will produce some nice vanilla notes without using flavourings
I’m not too worried about not tasting it, I’m sure toasting the flour and my bake this weekend will bring out the flavour. Interesting note about the allspice and maple syrup David, I’d not heard of that before, thank you.
Benny