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.
