Traditional home cooks typically enjoy making a variety of homemade foods in our kitchens, and we especially focus on recipes that are delicious and nutritious, including bone broth, sourdough starter and bread, and cultured dairy. These traditional foods nourish the body, mind, and spirit. Now, sprouted flour can be another traditional recipe you add to your list.
If you’ve ever searched for sprouted flour at your grocery store, you know it can be costly. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to make sprouted flour at home for a fraction of the cost of store-bought. Even better, the grain does the bulk of the work, letting you spend time doing other things.
But before we jump into the process of sprouting grain to make sprouted flour, let’s explore why you’d want to do this in the first place.
A Sourdough Substitue
You can make quick breads and muffins with a sourdough starter, but the results can be somewhat unpredictable and often disappointing. Additionally, younger family members may not always enjoy the sour taste of quick breads made with a sourdough starter. And besides, sometimes you just want to bake with commercially packaged yeast, baking powder, or baking soda because you want to make your baked good quickly without needing an overnight rise!
So, what should traditional-food cooks and bakers do? The simple answer: Learn how to make sprouted flour. When we soak and sprout our whole grains, we help our sprouted grains gain many of the same nutritional benefits of the flour that transforms into sourdough starter.
I like to make sprouted flour at home because it’s so easy. You can make homemade sprouted flour by soaking whole grains until they sprout. After drying the sprouts, you’ll grind them into flour that you can use in recipes instead of using regular whole-grain flour.
Can you simplify the process by skipping the sprouted step? Personally, I’m not a fan of doing so. You can’t just wake up one morning and decide you’re going to bake some muffins or a quick bread. You have to plan in advance, because if you want to soak unsprouted flour to make quick breads, muffins, and the like, you’ll have to soak this flour over a 12-hour period, which removes the “quick” part of quick bread. More concerningly, the final product’s texture can be disappointing. It takes a lot of trial and error to achieve the proper proportions of flour to liquid required to create a tender quick bread or muffin that isn’t dense.
Bake with Sprouted Flour
Learning to make sprouted flour at home will enable you to create tender, easily digestible baked goods. You can use your sprouted flour to make any baked good in place of the whole-grain flour called for in the recipe, and you can still use the commercially packaged yeast, baking powder, or baking soda specified in the recipe.
In the following recipe, you’ll create your own sprouted flour. Then, you can use the flour to make a delicious cinnamon-crunch banana bread (see opposite page). Whatever whole grain you choose to create the sprouted flour will reward you with a delightfully light, tender, and tasty crumb.
Yield: approximately 3 cups.
Equipment
- Large colander or mesh strainer
- Electric dehydrator (optional)
- Grain mill, manual or electric
Ingredients
- 2 cups wheat berries, any variety (but any whole grain can be used, such as einkorn, rye, or spelt)
- Filtered water (chlorine-free)
- Place the wheat berries in a bowl and cover them with filtered water. Allow the berries soak for approximately 12 hours.
- Drain the wheat berries, spread them out in a colander, and place the colander over a bowl.
- Cover the bowl loosely with a thin dish towel and place the bowl in an undisturbed warm place in your kitchen for approximately 12 hours. You can place it on top of a refrigerator, in a pantry, or in a cabinet. In warmer months, simply leaving the bowl on your countertop should be sufficient. You want an average temperature of approximately 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Every 12 hours, for up to 5 days, rinse the berries with filtered water.
- If the wheat berries don’t sprout after 5 days, it’s unlikely they’ll sprout. You can discard them or use them to make a porridge.
- Once the berries have sprouted, dry them on a silicone mat or parchment paper in a dehydrator set at 110 degrees for 12 to 24 hours. Alternatively, you can dry them on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a cool oven set at the lowest possible setting for 8 to 12 hours. A simple test to tell if the wheat berries are dry is to feel them. If they feel dry, they’re done. If you’re unsure, continue to dry them for 1 to 2 hours longer.
- Once your sprouted wheat berries are completely dry, run them through a grain mill to turn them into freshly milled sprouted flour. This freshly milled flour is ready to make yeast-risen breads, quick breads, muffins, cookies, and more.
Baker’s Notes
- Use fresh wheat berries. If they aren’t fresh, they may not sprout properly or at all.
- This technique can be used to make sprouted flour with any type of whole grain.
- Sprouts form best at around 75 degrees Fahrenheit, so in colder months, you may need to place them somewhere a bit warmer.
- Once milled, 1 cup of sprouted grain yields approximately 1-1/2 cups of flour.
- Generally, you should immediately use your freshly milled sprouted flour for best results. However, if you have additional unneeded flour, freeze it in an airtight, freezer-proof container to maintain maximum freshness. Freshly milled sprouted flour will stay fresh in the freezer for up to six months. If freshly milled sprouted flour is stored in the refrigerator, it should be used within one week.
Cinnamon-Crunch Banana Bread with Sprouted Flour
Ingredients
- 2-1/2cups sprouted whole-wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon, ground
- 1 teaspoon cloves, ground
- 1 teaspoon allspice, ground
- 1 cup unrefined whole cane sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
- 1 cup pecans, chopped and tossed with a pinch of flour
Topping
- 1 tablespoon demerara sugar or other raw sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Be sure to read the Baker’s Notes before starting.
Baker’s Notes
- The pan you use for baking matters. If you’re using a glass loaf pan, the banana bread will most likely take 70 minutes to bake. If you’re using a metal pan, the bread will most likely finish baking after 60 minutes. Be sure to check for doneness as described in the recipe.
- The riper the bananas, the more sweetness they’ll contribute to the banana bread.
- Remember to not overmix your batter! You want to mix just until all the ingredients come together. If you overmix, the banana bread may turn out a bit tough.
Yield: 1 loaf of bread.
- Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Grease the bottom of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.
- Cut out a piece of parchment paper to fit the dimensions of the bottom of the loaf pan, and then place it into the loaf pan. Butter the top of the parchment paper.
- Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices into a large bowl and whisk together. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, cream the sugar and butter together until well-mixed. The color won’t be light because you’ll be using unrefined whole cane sugar in this recipe, but the consistency should appear whipped and light.
- To the sugar and butter mixture, add eggs, one at a time, and mix until completely incorporated. Then, add the vanilla extract, sour cream, and mashed bananas, and mix well until fully incorporated.
- Add the nuts to the banana mixture and fold in until fully distributed.
- Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the banana mixture. Gently fold in the banana mixture with the dry ingredients. Do this by hand with a spoon or spatula. Do not overmix!
- Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan. Smooth the top.
- Make the topping by mixing together the demerara sugar and the cinnamon. Sprinkle on top of the batter.
- Bake for approximately 60 minutes in center of preheated oven.Insert a toothpick into the center of the banana bread. If it comes out clean, the bread is done. If not, continue to bake it and recheck it in 5-minute intervals until done.
- Remove bread to a cooling rack and run a knife along the edge of the loaf pan between the bread and the pan. Allow the bread to cool for 10 minutes. Then, place a plate over the top of the loaf pan and invert it. The banana bread should release from the loaf pan easily. Place the bread right-side up back onto the cooling rack for 10 minutes.
- Slice and enjoy! This banana bread will stay fresh for 1 week in the refrigerator.
Mary Bryant Shrader publishes detailed videos on how to make traditional foods on her Mary’s Nest YouTube channel and her website at Marys Nest. She’s also the author of the bestselling The Modern Pioneer Cookbook.
