Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Freshly baked by my niece Anne-Laure...

(all the pictures in this post were taken by Anne-Laure)
Si vous préférez lire ce billet en français, cliquer ici
...I am happy to introduce these beautiful sprouted wheat loaves fashioned after Keith Giusto's power bread. Anne-Laure has had her eye on this bread from the moment she saw it on Farine and she asked me for the formula. I sent it to her and she tried her hand at it with unmitigated success! Here is the message she sent me (my translation): "I bought a bag of organic sproutable wheat. Using the indicated wheat/water ratio (100/180), I put 250 g grains in 450 g tap water Friday at around 3 PM. The temperature in the kitchen was about 20 t0 23 degrees Celsius (68 to 73 F). I agitated the water 3 or 4 times a day. Sunday morning, around 10 AM, when I pressed a grain between thumb and forefinger, white matter came out. The grain was ready!"
"I washed the grain as indicated by Keith (it was very clean), then I strained it."
"My 250 g dry grains produced 400 g strained sprouted wheat. I ran all of it through the meat grinder with no problem"...
"...then I put half of it in the freezer for next time. I used the other half to make Keith's dough omitting raisins, honey, gluten, and toasted walnuts and almonds (to try and limit the calories) ." Ingredients: 200 g ground sprouted wheat 300 g unbleached all-purpose flour 200 g water 1/3 cube of instant yeast (I have to ask AL what she means exactly by that. She bakes in France and I guess yeast isn't sold there as it is in the USA) 11 g salt 30 g apple juice 125 g liquid starter (hydration: 100%) Method: "I mixed everything by hand in a big bowl, then directly on the counter. I had to add a fistful of flour as the dough was really very wet. I set it to ferment until 3 PM, then I shaped it into two batards which proofed until approximately 4:30 PM."
"I baked the batards in a 240 C/464 F oven for 25 minutes, then for 5 minutes at 180 C/356 F. I find the resulting loaves very tasty and very handsome. I will make this bread over and over. Next time, though, I'll sprout 1 kg of grains in one shot. If you'd like to know why you shouldn't let the wheat oversprout, click here".
Thank you, Anne-Laure, for being the first one to bake this bread from Farine's post on Keith Giusto's power bread as well as for this lively description of your experience. It sounds like you had a fun time making this dough and I would love to try it too. But I don't have a meat grinder (yet), so it'll have to wait. Meanwhile I will feast on your pictures!
Posted by at 10:18 AM
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9 comments:

  1. Merci MC!
    Do you recommend gluten? How about a stronger protein flour??? I sort of like it without the fruit too.

    Jeremy
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  2. Funny that you should mention gluten. When we made this bread at SFBI, half of us were for gluten and half against, so we divided the class into two teams and made one batch with and one batch without. In the end, we saw no difference. Giusto mostly puts it in to be sure that his dough will be strong enough (in a production environment he doesn't want any unpleasant surprises) but at home he says we can do without. We didn't use high-protein flour either. Without the fruit and nuts is nice. If you keep them in, you feel like you are eating your weight in calories for the day! :-)
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  3. Do you think this could be turned into a sourdough loaf or is yeast a good idea to use?
    I don't think about the calories, till later!!!!
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  4. It is a sourdough loaf, Jeremy! (Check out the last ingredient). Yeast is mostly there for safety although maybe the bread would be denser without it. It might be interesting to try making the bread without it.
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  5. It's definitely early in the morning, haven't had my cafe yet!

    Thanks
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  6. Ooo - I too have been sprouting grains until the tail was as long as the grain itself! Whoa, I've always seen instructions to do it that way - however, it does make sense not to, since I've also seen it said that the longer the tail gets, the more sugars are turned to starches (and the more bitter it becomes). I think I'll go try your process right now.

    Is Keith Giusto of SFBI related to the Giusto Flour milling business? I would assume yes.

    Thanks for the tip on oversprouting, MC.
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  7. Hi, John, thanks for stopping by! The answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, Keith has family ties to the other Giustos but no, his business has nothing to do with theirs. Keith is with Central Milling and so is his nephew Nicky whom I also got to meet during the Whole Grains workshop.
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  8. MC,
    Hope you are having an enjoyable trip! We did France in '73, and have so many fond memories - Ah!

    When you return, here are a few "welcome home" questions - I'm going to give this bread a try and I'm wondering if A L was using Keith's formula here, or if she changed more than omitting the fruit/nuts? Is the apple juice an add-on?

    In the meantime, enjoy the hell out of your trip!
    john
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  9. Hi MC

    This is a very interesting bread. Have you ever tried using food processor to grind the sprouted grains for this bread? I am very tempted to try myself. I think the trick is probably not to chop the grains too finely. I sometimes use my food processor to chop up roasted hazelnuts to a powder like meal and use it in making ice cream. Would you say that the meat grinder grind the grains quite coarse? If that is the case, then food processor may have a problem because it won't chop up sprouted grains evenly.

    I would be very interested to try this recipe. Would you please share Keith's list of ingredients in original quantities? I will then size them down for home use.

    THANK YOU.

    Shiao-Ping
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