Oct. 25, 2008 - Long awaited (NOT) update!
As often happens, life got overwhelming and I forgot all about this blog. Oh well, now I am back and will update what has happened since I last posted.
At my next blood test (after I started sprouting wheat) most of my levels stayed about the same. (Calcium came up some, magnesium dropped some, and iron stayed about the same.) I figured that since I had only started sprouting wheat halfway through the time between tests, it was good enough to continue sprouting wheat. My last blood test (Jan. 2008) has shown that my iron has come way up and the calcium and magnesim have stayed about the same. I don't know how much of a difference sprouting wheat makes, but I am still doing it.
Since I last posted, I have learned that two (of three) of my kids are very sensitive to MSG. Since most preservatives (and other things like processed corn and milk) act like MSG in the body, cooking has become even more exciting around here. We cook just about everything from scratch. It is good for us, I know that, but sometimes I just wish that I could order pizza for dinner.
Apr. 5, 2006 - My Bread recipie
Sprouted Bread
1 ½ Cups Water
½ cup oil
¼ cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
1 quart size canning jar of dried sprouted wheat berries
2 ½ teaspoons yeast
Grind the wheat using the finest setting.
Put all ingredients in bread machine.
Start machine.
These are the settings that I use for my bread machine.
Preheat – 1 min.
Knead 1 – 5 min. (This is really just stirring everything up.)
Knead 2 – 20 min. (This is really kneading.)
Rise 1 – 45 min.
Punch – 10 (I think that this is 10 seconds.)
Rise 2 – 0
Shape – 15 (This makes a total of 25 seconds.)
Rise 3 – 40 min.
Bake 33 min.
Keep warm – 0
Temp. 336 degrees
This is a very light loaf of bread. You can even put a hot dog in it and fold the bread around it without the bread breaking.
Mar. 31, 2006 - This is harder than I thought it would be.
This is turning out to be more difficult than I thought that it would. I have been sprouting all of the wheat that I eat, but soaking or sprouting the other grains is more difficult. It requires that I think about dinner at breakfast or even the day before. I am getting better, but sometimes it is hard. There are also those things that I eat that are unprepared whole grains. I thought that I would be able to avoid them, but when Dh brought home whole corn tortilla chips, I ate them. I have also found that I do not like oatmeal that has been soaked. I am hoping to get a flaker for my birthday, but that is a few months off yet.
On the other hand, I have been feeling better lately. I don't know if it is the diet, or just that spring is almost here, but getting up in the mornings is a lot easier. I hope this keeps up.
Mar. 8, 2006 - How to sprout wheat.
Sprouting was very intimidating to me when I first started. It seemed like it would take days to be able to sprout enough wheat to make a loaf of bread. In fact, it would take me 48 hours to sprout enough for one loaf of bread. Now that I have a dehydrator, I can make more than enough in 28-30 hours. That sounds like a lot, but because I can start a new batch before the first batch is finished, I can sprout enough for 2 ½ loaves of bread in 48 hours. The dehydrator can dry 5 cups in about 4 hours, whereas I could only dry 2 cups in the oven and it would take 8-10 hours. So, now that I have started spouting, I think that it is the way to go.
Now for the details: How to sprout wheat.
It is an easy but time consuming process.
Find out how much wheat you can dry at one time. Spread out a cup or two of wheat on a cookie sheet or casserole dish or the tray of your dehydrator and figure out how much you will be able to dry at one time.
Find a quart size canning jar,(or a jar of similar size) for each cup of berries that you want to dry.
Put one cup of wheat in each jar and cover with water.
Cover the jar with nylon netting (or something that will let you drain the wheat without taking the cover off), then screw the rings on the canning jars.
Let sit 12 hour or overnight. (The other day I only let it sit for about 6 hours and it still worked.)
After the wheat has soaked, drain the water. Rotate the jar so that the wet wheat will stick to the sides (this spreads it out). Let the jars sit upside down in a bowl, so that they drain. If this step is happening during the day, you can rinse them once or twice.
When the wheat has just begun to sprout (12-24 hours for me), spread it out on the trays that you will use to dry it.
Dry the wheat. If you are using the oven set it at 100 to 150 degrees, and let the wheat dry overnight or 8 to 10 hours.
Store in a clean canning jar with lid until you are ready to use.
If you want to dry a lot, you can set a new group to soaking every 12 hours, so that there is a new batch to dry every 12 hours.
Mar. 5, 2006 - Menu planning
In order to soak or sprout all of the grains that we eat, it takes a lot of advanced planning. I have planned a menu for next week, including all of the extra steps and I thought that I would share it with you.
Monday
B-pancakes and fruit
L-Ted's in Bed (cornbread with sausages baked into it)
D-Asian Honey Chicken
Tuesday
B-bread with jelly, fruit
L-chicken nuggets (homemade from leftover chicken)
D-Stir fry, rice, fruit, bread
Wednesday
B-French toast, fruit
L-tortillas (homemade), stir fry leftovers, fruit
D-spaghetti, vegetable (frozen), salad, fruit
Thursday
B-hard boiled eggs, bread, fruit
L-leftovers
D-breaded fish, salad, peas and carrots, seasoned rice, fruit
Friday
B-boiled grains with syrup, fruit
L-soup, bread, fruit
D-pizza (homemade), salad, fruit
Saturday
B-scrambled eggs, bread, fruit
L-brats, french fries (homemade), fruit, fresh vegetable
D-Four beans and sausage soup, bread, fruit
Sunday
B-bread and fruit
L-leftovers
D-steak salad, baked beans, bread, fruit
Now, the plan to make this menu work.
Monday morning – soak rice for dinner
Wednesday noon – soak grains for cornbread
Thursday morning – soak rice for dinner / soak grains for Friday breakfast
Friday evening – soak beans for soup
Saturday evening – soak beans for baked beans
I have used a menu for a long time, but I am used to being able to switch things around on a whim. Now, I have to stick to the plan a little better so that the beans and grains will be ready when we want them. Switching to sprouted flour has made things easier though, as there are not so many thing that have to soak. (Things like pancakes, tortillas, and bread dough.)
I used a plan like this for the last two weeks. I have found that if I follow it, it makes life a lot easier. But, if I don't follow it, it makes life a lot more difficult. For example, today we were supposed to have a black bean salad for dinner, but because I didn't get the beans on to soak when I was supposed to, I have to come up with something else for dinner.
Mar. 2, 2006 - The Bread Turned Out Great!
The loaf of bread that I made from dehydrated sprouted wheat turned out great! It had a texture similar to white bread. Since wheat can be sprouted, dried, and then stored, the actual baking of the sprouted wheat bread takes less time than the process of soaking the flour. From here on out, I am going to use sprouted wheat for making bread. The bread is better, and the time restraints are easier to live with. Now, I just have to keep up with the sprouting and drying process.
Mar. 2, 2006 - Sprouting and drying wheat berries
When I visited my mom yesterday, I picked up her old dehydrator. Dh did not want to buy a new one. (He thinks that it when the newness wears off it will disappear into the back of a cabinet, never to be seen again.) So, I ventured into Mom's basement and found it in a dusty corner.
I have been sprouting 2 cups of berries at a time, because that is all that I could dry in the oven. With the dehydrator, I will be able to dry five cups at a time. This morning I dried two cups of berries in the dehydrator, and they were dry by noon! (It had been taking all day.) I have five more cups soaking, so tomorrow, I should have more to dry.
To sprout the wheat, I put one cup of berries in a quart canning jar with two cups of water. I leave it for 12 hours, and then drain the jar. I then leave the jar for 12 to 24 hours. (I have heard that you don't want to let the sprouts get very big, or the flour won't work very well.) Then I dry the berries. (Either in a dehydrator, or in the oven set at 100 degrees.)
Last week I made some pizza dough with sprouted wheat. It was O.K, but not great. I had to halve the recipe because I did not have enough wheat dried. I think that I did not add enough liquid.
I am going to try some sprouted wheat bread. I plan to use my old recipe. The only change will be that I will use sprouted wheat. Hopefully it will turn out.
Mar. 1, 2006 - The Perfect Loaf of Bread
Before I started worrying about phytic acid, I had bread making down to a science. Dump 1 ¾ cups of water into the bread machine. Add ½ cup of olive oil and ¼ cup of honey. 2 teaspoons of salt go in, and then 4 cups of wheat berries go into the grain mill. Dump the flour into the bread machine and then 1 T of yeast. Start the machine and in less than 3 hours, I would have the perfect loaf of bread.
But now, I just can't seem to get it right. I started by adapting Sue Gregg's two stage bread recipe to the bread machine. I ground my 4 cups of flour, like always, but then I soaked it in 2 cups of water (with 2 T of cider vinegar). I also proofed the yeast before adding it in. This turned out to be way too much water. The bread was edible, but not what we were used to. For my next loaf, I decided not to proof the yeast (that would cut back on the water by ¼ Cup). It was better, but still not right, so I tried again. This time I only used 2 T apple cider vinegar with water to make 1 ¾ Cups, and the bread turned out good. The only problem is that it is very difficult to get the flour all wet with only 1 ¾ cups of liquid. I have had success with the last couple of loaves, pretty close to what we are used to. Then there was today. I started the machine last night, and when I took the bread out this morning I knew that something went wrong. The bread had fallen, and when I cut it there was a big hole in the middle of the loaf.
Bread is a staple of our diet, so I need to have a reliable recipe. I borrowed a dehydrator today, so maybe I will start experimenting with sprouted wheat bread.
Feb. 28, 2006 - How I got started.
Almost two years ago, I got a Whisper Mill (now Wonder Mill) for my birthday. Dh thought that it was a toy that would soon loose it newness, and that it would end up sitting on the shelf. Dh was wrong. I still make almost every baked good that we eat from fresh ground flour.
Then (about a year ago) Dh decided to visit a new doctor. This doctor does blood tests and then gives you vitamins and supplements according to what you need. A few months after Dh went, we decided that it was my turn. I had my blood tested and I was somewhat shocked at the results. I had been eating all this good bread, but I was low on soooooo many things. The doctor attributed it to the fact that I had had 3 children in 4 years, and that sounded reasonable so I figured that the bread just wasn't as high in vitamins as I had been led to believe.
Iron has been one of my biggest deficiencies, (I was even clinically low during my last pregnancy.) and the doctor doubled my iron supplements. Three months later, I had my blood tested again. I had improved, but not as much as I had hoped. The doctor told me to expect it to take two to three years to get back to 'normal.'
About three months after my second blood test, I ran across an article by Sue Gregg. The article talked about how phytic acid prohibits the absorption of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, and zinc. (Phytic acid is in the bran of the grain, and I think that it is the stuff that keeps the seed from sprouting before it is supposed to.) This got me to thinking, and when I checked my blood tests theses minerals were some of the lowest.
So, all that to say that, for the next three months, I am going attempt to remove phytic acid from my diet. It is not hard to neutralize phytic acid, but it is time consuming. There are three ways to neutralize phytic acid: soaking, sprouting, and fermenting. To soak the grain, you put the flour or grain in an acid liquid and leave it for 12 to 24 hours. To sprout it, you soak the grain for 12 hours, and then keep it damp until it the seeds start to grow (12 to 48 hours). Fermenting is beyond be right now, but sour dough would be an example.
I plan to document my journey into the world of 'properly prepared' grains. In three months I will have another blood test and see if it really made any difference.
