Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Making Bread with Fermented (Soaked) Flour

One of the principles of traditional diets is that whole grains must be soaked, sprouted, or fermented before cooking and eating.

When life is busy, this is one of the hardest steps to do since it requires planning ahead and knowing what you will back days before you make it.

I have recently gotten into a rhythm with my bread making, however, and begin soaking the flour for the next day's bread while the previous loaf is baking. Now, we don't run out of bread and the process is painless for me as it has become habitual.

This is my recipe for soaked grain bread:

1 cup water (warm)
1/4 cup butter or coconut oil
1 TB whey (or 1/4 c yogurt)
3 cups whole wheat flour (fresh ground at home is best)

1 TB Rapadura (succanat)
1 TB honey
1 tsp warm water
1 1/2 tsp yeast

1 egg, beaten
1 tsp sea salt
extra flour as needed

First, combine first 4 ingredients to form a dough. I use the bread machine and allow it to mix them into a dough before unplugging it. Allow to soak/ferment for 18-24 hours.

Remove dough from mixer/ bread machine. In mixer/ bread machine, combine next four ingredients (sweeteners, yeast, warm tsp. water). Allow to sit for 5-10 minutes. Add egg and salt.

Begin breaking the dough into small pieces and add a few to the machine. Turn on and keep adding more pieces of the dough until incorporated. You will need to add a little flour to get the right consistency. For this, Sally would be ok with unbleached white flour, you could also do sprouted grain flour if you have it. I just use wheat.

After the dough forms, allow the bread machine to continue on dough setting. When done, remove and put in buttered floured loaf pan and rise for 45 mins or until doubled and bake for 30 mins. on 350 F.

I hope that recipe works for you; you will likely need to experiment a little. I adapted it from Sally Fallon's recipe as well as my conventional bread machine recipe. If you have a KitchenAid but not a bread machine, you should allow it to rise for about an hour after it forms a good dough and is kneaded for about five minutes. After the hour, punch down and form into a loaf, then continue as directed.

9 comments:

Chase said...

I love your blog! We seem to have many of the same principles and interests. It's so encouraging to me that raw milk has made such a difference in your family's lives. My fiance & I just left our lives in the city behind to move to the country and eventually have our own farm. I have Lyme Disease and my doctor recently encouraged me to drink raw milk - he was excited to learn I already had been and asked if I could bring him some. Anyway, love your blog. I recently wrote a whole post on raw milk and another one on free-range eggs. Take a look if you're interested. I'm going to bookmark your blog ;)

Maria said...

Chase, I would love to read your post on raw milk and free range eggs! I couldn't find it though; will you please post the link? Thanks so much for commenting, I hope to see you around the blog world! ;)

Chase said...

Hi Maria - you can find the raw milk post here: http://strangebirdy.blogspot.com/2008/02/country-life-raw-milk.html

Hope you enjoy it. Take care!

Unknown said...

this looks like a great recipe - I'm going to try it tonight. I googled how to use a bread machine with soaked flour and found your site.
Out of all the principles in Nourishing Traditions, sprouting my grains is the most time-consuming, so I cop out most of the time. We eat porridge every day that has been soaked in whey (and I make a big batch that keeps for days before making more)
We live in Canada where it is illegal to even GIVE AWAY raw milk. And try to find chicken feet here? Another "so-called health risk" so I find it harder and harder to get gelatin out of my broths. Glad I found your site - I'll be back for more :-)

Unknown said...

If you need to add more flour if the mix is too wet how can you do this with soaked flour or is it ok to use a little unsoaked flour?

Unknown said...

Is it only 1 tsp of water to sit with the 1.5 tsp of yeast?? Just checking because that doesn't seem like enough. Thanks, Sherri

Kristin said...

Hello Raw Milk Mama (Maria). I made this bread over the past few days and oh boy is it sour! This is my first fermented loaf (I have made pancakes with fermented flour before, I guess the syrup offset the sour flavor). It's even more sour than sour dough, I think, BUT my part (as I gave each of my children a bit of dough to work with and form into loaves) turned out really good! I made cinnamon-raisin bread with pastured/cultured butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, raisins in the bread and yum! it's good! Thanks for posting this recipe! ~Kristin

The Artsy Oils Girl said...

Thank you so much for this recipe! My oven just broke and I need to use my bread maker but did not know how to make soaked flour bread in it! Your a life saver!

wee9nee5 said...

Has anyone tried this with baking soda or powder instead of yeast? I'm trying to eliminate yeast from my diet.

Thanks,
J.