Guide on Growing Grains (and Crafting Sprouted Grain Meal)
Sprouted grain flour is a health-conscious alternative to traditional flour, offering a host of benefits due to its increased nutritional value. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to prepare sprouted grain flour at home, with a focus on removing antinutrients.
Preparing the Sprouted Grains
- Soak the grains: Place the whole grains in a slow cooker or large mixing bowl, and cover them with water. Let them soak for about 8 to 12 hours, depending on the type of grain.
- Rinse and aerate: After soaking, drain the grains and rinse them thoroughly using a fine-mesh sieve. This step is crucial for aerating the grains as they sprout, which helps save counter space and minimizes clean-up.
- Sprout: Spread the rinsed grains on a tray and let them sprout in a warm, dark place for 1 to 3 days. Be careful not to let the sprouts grow too large to avoid malting, which can produce an overly sweet, gooey bread that never cooks through.
- Dehydrate: Dry the sprouted grains for 12 to 18 hours, until they are firm and dry. A food dehydrator is essential for drying sprouted grains at a relatively low temperature to prevent roasting. Alternatively, you can use a quiet, cool-running grain grinder like the Komo Grain Grinder and Grain Flaker to grind the dried sprouted grains into flour.
Removing Antinutrients
Sprouting itself is the key method for effectively removing antinutrients from sprouted grain flour. This process significantly reduces major antinutrients such as phytate and tannins by activating endogenous enzymes like phytase that break these compounds down during germination.
Additional steps to further reduce antinutrients include:
- Soaking and washing grains before sprouting to start leaching out soluble antinutrients.
- Maintaining optimal sprouting time and conditions, since longer or controlled sprouting times can enhance phytate degradation while preserving nutrients.
- Post-sprouting processing such as thorough drying and superfine milling (e.g., jet-milling or ball-milling) to improve flour quality and may indirectly aid in removing residual antinutrients through particle size refinement.
While fermentation is another known method to reduce antinutrients, for sprouted grain flour specifically, sprouting duration combined with washing and milling is the most direct approach.
Storing and Using Sprouted Grain Flour
The ground flour can be sifted as desired and stored in the freezer until ready to use. This way, you can enjoy the benefits of sprouted grain flour in your favourite baked goods, such as cookies and bread.
To aid in the sprouting process, raw apple cider vinegar can be added to the soaking water.
With these simple steps, you can unlock the nutritional potential of sprouted grain flour and enjoy healthier, more nutritious baked goods at home.
Embrace the healthy-cooking lifestyle by making your own sourdough baking with sprouted grain flour. Following the step-by-step guide, you can learn to soak, sprout, dehydrate, and grind grains at home, removing antinutrients in the process.
To ensure the most effective removal of antinutrients, focus on maintaining optimal sprouting time and conditions, further reducing antinutrients by washing grains before sprouting and processing the flour through thorough drying and superfine milling.
Once your ground flour is ready, store it in the freezer for later use, using it to create delicious food-and-drink items like cookies and bread as part of your home-and-garden lifestyle.
){kind=link}