Image by Meck Mom
**This post has been entered in Pennywise Platters Thursday at The Nourishing Gourmet, Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Whole Foods for the Holidays, Breads at A Little Spain in Iowa!**
I have been wanting sprouted buns for sometime (and no, the picture above isn’t the ones I baked). I’ve been using my previous go-to recipes but they just weren’t working for me. They were coming out hard, crumbly, not well-risen and just didn’t taste good. I wanted something soft, sweet, and delicious. Baking yeasted breads with sprouted flour can be difficult though. However, a recent experiment yielded delicious results, so I am happy to share it with you!
Ingredients:
2.5 cups raw milk, scalded
4 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. yeast
2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 c. raw honey
4 – 5 c. “lightly sprouted*” flour
Directions:
Scald the milk and add the butter. Allow this mixture to cool to 120 degrees or below. If it is too warm you WILL kill the yeast! (Ask me how I know! But I salvaged it okay and it was still yummy, if not really risen.) Put the yeast, honey, and milk mixture in a large bowl. Allow it to proof for 5 – 10 minutes until foamy. Add the salt and then begin adding flour, a bit at a time. When the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, use your hands to knead it. Keep adding flour until the dough is fairly smooth and elastic, but still slightly greasy. (If you add too much flour it won’t be as soft.) When the dough is smooth and has been kneaded for 5 minutes or so, put it in a warm place to rise until doubled, about one hour. Punch it down and shape your buns as desired — hamburger, hot dog, sub roll, whatever! Allow this to rise for about another hour, until doubled. Preheat oven to 400, and bake buns for 15 – 20 minutes, until golden brown.
They freeze well too!
*”Lightly sprouted” means that the grains are sprouted just until tiny tails, 1/8″ long have appeared. The more the grains are sprouted, the more the gluten is pre-digested and becomes inactive. Well-sprouted grains are great for quick breads or other products where you don’t want developed gluten, but won’t yield the soft, risen results you want in a yeasted bread. I specifically sprout my grains differently (different lengths of time) depending on what I’m baking.
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TESTING!
Thanks!!! They look delicious and I'm always interested in new recipes…..especially the kind that freeze well.
I'm just getting into sprouting-drying-grinding my grain for flour for bread making. So far, all I've done is buy the grain mill attachment for my KitchenAid mixer, but I'll be ordering organic grain soon. So, a couple of questions, please. First, once you soak your grains (overnight?), how long does it take to dry them in the dehydrator so that the grain will grind properly? And the other question, where do you buy your organic (I presume organic) grains? Thanks! I love your posts. I've gotten introduced to you via Cultures for Health on Facebook.
Hi Deb!
Thanks for visiting! I posted a great tutorial on sprouting grains awhile back. You can see it here: http://www.modernalternativemama.com/blog/2010/7/6/tutorial-sprouting-grains.html. Make sure once they've been soaked that you leave them for another day or two (drained, but rinsed every so often to stay moist) until they have little tails on them. They usually take 4 – 8 hours to dry completely, depending on whether or not I rinse them the final time. Around 6 hours is probably average for me.
I buy my grains locally. We have a little coop store that brings in a lot of great bulk stuff from Amish farms. Another farm has some too, where I get my CSA. If you can find grain locally from a farm or coop that's probably your best bet. Ordering online will be more expensive because you'll need to pay shipping too. But obviously many do it! Azure Standard is popular and if you have a drop point near you it would be a great deal! (I, unfortunately, don't.)