Fermentation, Sprouting and Super Soft Honey Oat Wheat Bread

Let me first give the disclaimer that I am not an expert on health in relation to bread.  What I am is a guy who does not like Pharma and therefore goes the natural herbal route (with excellent results), and who really loves baking bread (and eating it too!)

I have friends that have tolerance issues with wheat, and I suffer from Gerds that only acts up when I eat all the wrong things.

With that said, let's get right into this post.

1. It is my understanding that FERMENTATION (minimum 6 hour flour/water/yeast soak) improves the health benefits dramatically due to reducing the impact of Phytic acid, which is an anti-nutrient factor of wheat (and other products).

2. I also understand that soaking, or sprouting wheat berries also reduces the impact of Phytic acid.

I've noted reports that there are other benefits as well, such as pre-digestion, etc. I don't want to get into all that here.

If you have read my previous post about the most amazing soft and fluffy 100% Sprouted Whole Wheat bread, you then know I'm big on using Sprouted Wheat flour that I make at home.

Recently, after much study and research, I've learned that Sourdough breads are really good for you.  So I have spent the last few weeks making loaf after loaf of really great sourdough breads, until I have grown tired of just eating sourdough bread!  LOL!

So from time to time, I want to do a yeast bread and make all kinds of those sinfully delicious options out there.  The problem, of course, is the use of regular white flour AND the quick rise times that result in breads that are not good for you because of the Phytic acid issue (and the non-release of nutrients).

So I went about experimenting and this is what I came up with that just came out FANTASTIC!!!

1. I took 4 cups of AP Flour plus 2 cups of water and just a pinch of yeast, mixed and allowed to ferment overnight.  This is my FERMENTATION PHASE.  I'm banking on reduced Phytic here.

2. The next day, I poured this into my Bosch Universal Mixer, added 1/3 cup Agave (or honey), 1/3 cup coconut oil, 1 tsp. Salt and 1 tbsp yeast.

Now, while the mixer is running on low speed, I start adding in my Sprouted Whole Wheat flour until the dough pulls away from the sides and cleans it really nice.  

So I don't have the exact amount of Sprouted wheat needed, as it would depend anyway on various factors such as humidity, etc.  So you just slowing add the sprouted flour until it does what you see on the video here.

Then I keep it kneading for 10 solid minutes.  This is what I want to see when it has finished the knead.

 Then I just pull it all out, form it into a ball, and plop it into a greased bowl.

Then you cover and let it double in size, the standard procedure.

After it doubled, I sprayed my counter with oil, divided my dough into two equal parts (was about 28 ounces, give or take), flattened them out into a large rectangle, and then rolled them up into loaves.

Placed into two 9x5 bread pans (greased of course).

Note: One of the loaves I added dried cranberries and sunflower seeds, sprinkled some brown sugar over it (very lightly, not making a cinnamon bread), then rolled it.

I then put then in the oven with the lights on until they reached this stage.

At this point I left them in the oven and set it to 375F. When the preheat timer beeped, I set my timer for 30 minutes to bake above 190F internal but before 205F.

This is how they looked when they came out.

After they cooled for about an hour, I cut into one of the loaves that I happened to add dried cranberries and sunflower seeds before rolling out. This is how it looked.

I hope you can see that this bread came out super soft. I just flopped over in my hand and was starting to tear by gravity alone! It tasted wonderful!  The loaf felt really light when I picked it up.

Eureka!  A very nice soft sandwich/snack bread that you can do all kinds of things to (like I did with the cranberries, seeds and brown sugar) that has its white flour component fermented and its wheat component sprouted. I would call this somewhat guilt-free in comparison to just straight yeast bread.

As a side note, the wheat I happened to have sprouted for this is HARD WHITE.

Hope you try this out for yourself. I think you will find it worth the little time it takes to make.