Look Mom & Dad, it's sprouted flour!
I picked up a kilo of sprouted universal (all purpose; AP) wheat flour today! Wow! ...in a normal supermarket! I'm so excited! Why? As I get older, I eat less, I want more nutrition from my food ingredients, sprouted flour could be an option. Being curious, I'm investigating.
Let me back up a little. I live just outside of Linz, Austria. Our flour normally comes in kilo size paper bags and there are several brands to choose from. One popular brand is Fini's Feinstes (or Fini's Finest). I had noticed there was a "New" red label in the corner. I grabbed my w700 bread flour and some whole spelt flour and started rolling the packages over looking for something more than w480 which is AP. Proteins are listed and what is this new one? With Keimkraft..... keimkraft... sprouts! I grabbed a package and hurried home to investigate. Here is the site in English. [1] I have never seen sprouted flour here before other than malt.
There are pictures of the sprouts at the site, 10 of them and they make up 10% of the flour. That was a little bit of a let down, I was hoping for 100% sprouted flour. Barley is not included which is the known "malt" grain.
So now I'm wondering...why only 10%? Enzyme action? Dan mentions 5% malt maximum..... (my brain gears are turning remembering malt sprouts have long tails). In my web searches I ran into interesting definitions, sprouts vs germination. The words are often used interchangeably but germination happens first and then the sprout appears and grows. What I'm trying to understand is .... as the sprout gets longer or older with time, do the enzymes get stronger and concentrated? Are freshly germinated seeds milder but still as nutritious as older sprouts? The sprouts are stopped at a particular stage, dried, and milled into flour. Which stage? (If I were to germinate my own and stop the process to dry them, when is the best time to catch the sprouts before they interfere with my dough?)
Will the flour behave itself when I make bread? Protein is 11.9 not bad...