Category: Healing

Let’s talk about sprouts, baby. Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let’s talk about sprouts. Today’s sponsor is ‘every day I wake up with a random song in my head’, and it’s brought to you by ‘the 90s’. I’m not kidding. Yesterday it was Johnny Cash’s Man in Black, today, Salt-n-Pepa.

Sprouts! First we will talk about the ‘why’ then about the ‘how’. The ‘why’ covers most seeds in general. We germinate ( same thing as sprouting) several kinds of seeds and beans here on a regular basis. We sprout alfalfa, mung, radish and garbanzo…..and now wheat. Wheat berries will be the focus of this article. Sprouting unleashes powerful enzymes that are literally the beginning of life. I believe we benefit greatly from consuming plants at this stage. Seeds and beans have phytic acid in them. It acts as an energy store, waiting to give the future plant that boost to life it needs. Now while this phytic acid is great for seeds, it’s not so good for us humans. Once in our digestive track, it inhibits the absorption of many key nutrients by latching onto them. So by neutralizing this phytic acid we greatly increase the available amount of iron, magnesium, copper, zinc and calcium. It’s probably why they have to ‘vitamin fortify’ processed grain products you find in the grocery. Sprouting also seriously increases all the ‘B’ vitamins which are partly responsible for keeping us energized. It breaks down gluten and makes our food more easily digestible. It also gets rid of aflatoxins which have been shown to be a cancer causing. Now who wouldn’t want all those benefits!

In February Sam got us two bags of wheat berries. It fit neatly into our plan for a simpler life. Building our food from the ground up. We’ve roasted our own coffee, we grind all our own meat and sausage and grinding our own flour just made sense. Like I said in my article about homemade bread, it is taking a little more practice baking with it than I predicted. So for now, I am just learning and simply doing the best I can. Another big reason to buy from a company where we can follow our wheat back to the field is the way commercially grown wheat is treated. You have all heard me get on my soapbox on this issue but in case you missed the show here are a few disturbing facts. To start off with, almost all commercially grown wheat has been genetically altered. Some genes being splices with totally different species, like bugs or amphibians. Gee I wonder where my wheat allergy came from. These plants are genetically modified to be able to withstand being repeatedly doused with heavy weed and plant killers without dying. Hmmm, why does processed food containing wheat make us sick? And why is it giving a whole new generation of us food allergies and cancers to which history has never seen the likes of? Another troubling fact is when a farmer  big agricultural company says it’s time to harvest, they use a different vegetation killer on the wheat. This herbicide kills the whole crop just days before it is harvested to ensure the entire field is dry and ready for harvest. From there it goes straight to processing plants to make the food we feed our families. Drops mic steps off soap box. So you can see our desire to be able to follow our food from farm to table. That means we know where and how our food was grown as well as their farming practices.

Back to sprouting…… as I started to look for recipes and articles about milling and using our wheat berries, I ran across the benefits of sprouted wheat flour. So I decided it was the simple thing to do (because I don’t’ have 10 other simple projects every day). It turned out to be very easy and we are pleased with the results. It tastes almost the same as our un-sprouted wheat and reacts the same way as well. I made sandwich bread last night and snuck some in place of the regular flour.

I started by filling a half gallon sized canning jar 1/3 full of hard red wheat berries. I have both hard red and soft white but the hard red seems to be the better choice for sprouting.

Then I filled the jar with water. I put a piece of a nylon stocking (never used but for this purpose) over the top and secured it with a canning jar ring. I have also used cheese cloth. I just rinse thoroughly and simply reuse. It will sit in the water anywhere from over night to 24hrs, really whatever is convenient.

The next day or after a hearty soak, drain and rinse the berries very well. You can put them in a dish drainer or drain onto a wash cloth like I did. We don’t have a dish washer so my drainer is always full.

You can see as time passes, the wheat really starts to swell, eventually filling the jar.

I rinse them several times while I am waiting for the germination to start and the phytic acid to go bye-bye. Waiting for the little white ‘tails’ can take anywhere from 6 hours to a day and a half. It really depends on the temp in your house. It has been about 24 hours for me. You want to wait till the tails are about a 1/4″ long. My second batch was a little longer but still seemed OK. That photo is at the top of this post.

Many people don’t do the next step. You can add the sprouted wheat berries to foods or cook with them as is. I have personally not tried that yet. Once the little tails are about a 1/4″ long it is time to dehydrate them. I used an actual dehydrator with parchment paper. You can also do it in the oven on cookie sheets on a very low setting of 150 or 175 if your over goes that low. Remember, we just want the wheat dried out, NOT cooked or roasted. I spread them out on the dehydrator sheets to dry. The length of time this step takes, again will vary greatly depending on house temp and drying method. For us it has been about 24hrs.

I use the ‘bite test’ to check for doneness. It should feel the same as the pre-sprouted dry wheat. Once it is dried you can store it as is to grind at a later date or get it out of the way and grind it now. We mill all of our stuff to the finest particle size possible. As you can see, these measurements yielded about 4 cups of flour.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me or leave a reply.  –Stacey–

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