Soaked Whole Wheat Bread

I have discussed the benefits of eating grains in a previous post, Grain Pain, so won't go into the nutritional aspects again. In that post, I mentioned that I have a Skippy Grain Mill and was planning to use it to grind my own wheat and use it for soaked wholewheat cooking. Well, I haven't had a lot of time to do this lately, but find myself with some time on my hands again.

I've been experimenting with sourdough, too. Sourdough requires a lot of dedication and planning. If you want to make a loaf of bread, you basically have to start two days before! It doesn't require a lot of hands on activity, mostly just sitting around doing its thing, but when it's ready to have something done to it, you have to be there to do it! So, I'm back to thinking of other ways to use our own wheat to make my bread and am revisiting the soaking idea. I found this recipe at Don't Waste the Crumbs and have given it a go with a few tweaks of my own and using the Thermomix. If you don't have a Thermomix, just mix by hand.  It's not totally wholewheat, but this will hopefully make it a little lighter and less dense.

Here's how to do it:
(Start the evening before)

SOAKED (almost) WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
The Bush Gourmand

480g whole wheat flour, freshly ground if possible
140g white bread flour
240g buttermilk (or use ½ cup yoghurt mixed with ½ cup whole milk)
¼ cup cold water
90g soft butter

Add to the Thermomix bowl and mix on dough setting for about 3 minutes or until the mixture begins to come together. It will resemble play dough.

Place in a ceramic bowl and cover with plastic wrap and leave to sit on the bench overnight or for up to 24 hours. It will look darker on the outside of the dough. Don't worry, this is perfectly normal and the bread will not be dark in colour.

Next morning, continue with the recipe below:

½ cup warm water
1 Tbsp rapadura sugar syrup (Maleo) or 2 Tbsp honey
2 ½ tsp dried yeast
2 Tbsp macadamia or other mild tasting oil

Mix together in a small jug and leave to prove for 5 minutes.
Place soaked dough back into Thermomix bowl - break it up a little. Add the proved yeast mixture and knead on dough setting for 3 minutes.

1 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp bread improver
½ tsp Vitamin C powder

Add to the dough and knead for a further minute on dough setting. Remove from bowl and place on to bench or silpat mat. Knead by hand for 5 minutes until smooth and silky. Shape into a round ball and place back into the (greased) ceramic bowl. Cover with greased plastic wrap and leave in a warm place to double in size.

Roll dough out into a rectangle shape.

Once proved, remove dough from the bowl and place onto a lightly floured work surface.

Roll the rectangle up from the shorter side and tuck in the edges.

Place into a bread tin and cover once more with the greased plastic wrap.

 and leave to rise again until it's come up above the sides of the tin.

My bread tin measures 26cm x 11 cm. I bought it online from All About Bread.

Place into a hot oven, around 225C. After 10 minutes, reduce to 200C and bake for another 20 minutes or so. Check whether it's cooked by carefully removing from the tin and tapping the base. It should sound hollow. If not, place the loaf back into the oven straight onto the racks and bake a further 5 to 10 minutes.

I like the top of my bread nice and dark, so very happy with this. If you prefer a lighter coloured crust, preheat oven to 200C and cook at this temperature.
The loaf feels nice and light and has a wonderful texture.

...and it's delicious with lashings of butter and my homemade dried apricot jam.

Megan

Grain Pain

As a grain farmer, it is in my best interests to promote grains as a part of a healthy diet. However, when people ask me about weight loss, the first thing I say it to try a gluten free diet for a while.

My reasoning is, that the Western Diet relies far too much on wheat. It is in everything from custard powder, cornflour, seasoning mixes, soup mixes etc. It isn't so much that wheat is a problem, it's the fact that it isn't prepared correctly for our bodies to assimilate the proteins it contains, known collectively as gluten. As the name suggests, gluten is the glue that holds everything together when wheat flour is used to make cakes, bread, biscuits and sauces.

Gluten is a generic name for the proteins found in a specific sub-group of grains - the Pooideae family of grasses. Wheat, oats, barley & rye belong to this grass family. Each grain contains a different type of protein, for example rye contains a protein called secalin and oats have a protein known as avenin.
Gluten from wheat is actually a composite of two proteins - gliadin and glutenin.

Wheat proteins can be particularly difficult for some people to digest. Around 1% of the population cannot have any gluten in their diets at all due to a condition called coeliac disease which is an immune reaction to proteins found in wheat, barley, oats, triticale and rye. The tiny finger-like villi in the large intestine (bowel) become inflamed and flattened, leading to malabsorption of nutrients and a host of symptoms including bloating.

When people are overweight or eating the wrong sorts of foods - eg highly processed (generally the two go together), the villi in the bowel can be compromised. They may be clogged, blocked and even laying down flat so that nutrients aren't getting to all the tissues and organs in the body that need them. Consequently, many systems begin to fail and various conditions raise their ugly heads - gallstones, arthritis, IBS, type 2 diabetes, ulcerative colitis, gout and a host of other conditions and diseases.

Are you still reading? Good on you! Here's a couple of pictures to break up all the verbosity.

Healthy villi

Damaged villi

Courtesy http://www.coeliac.org.au

Therefore, removing gluten from the diet for a month or so can make a real difference to the body. The villi need to be in great condition in order to digest grains efficiently and gain the benefit of the vitamins (particularly the B vitamins), minerals, phytonutrients and fibre that they provide for ultimate health.

Once the body begins to recover and a whole foods diet is being followed, the villi will recover and begin to do the job they were designed to do. The body begins the recovery process and many people find that conditions they've lived with for years disappear. This is when whole grains can be added back into the diet.

By whole grains, of course I mean the complete grain - the bran which is the outer layer, the endosperm which is the inner layer and the germ, the heart of the grain. All these work together to assist with digestion of the grain. The germ of any grain will not survive nutritionally  for very long outside the grain. The endosperm will also lose a significant percentage of its nutrients when the outer bran is removed.
White flour is simply the endosperm of the grain that is left once the bran and germ are removed. Many healthy breads and bread mixes add back the bran and germ after milling. I find this amusing. ....Pull it all apart, allow some of it to break down and lose its nutritional value, then put it all back together and call it healthy.....

The best way to prepare whole grains for better assimilation and digestion is to soak, ferment or sprout them. Both nuts and grains contain phytic acid in their outside layer. Phytic acid can bind with key minerals needed from the nut or grain so they are less available to the body. Soaking, fermenting or sprouting grains in particular will also allow enzymes, lactobacilli and other helpful organisms to not only neutralise the phytic acid but also break down and release the complex starches and proteins within the grain to allow for easier digestion.

 Sue Gregg of Sue Gregg cookbooks has developed some fantastic recipes using what she calls 'blender batters' using a two stage process. The grains are soaked in an acid medium ( usually whey but lemon juice is adequate) for 12 to 24 hours and then blended to a smooth batter. Eggs, flavouring and rising agents are added before baking.
There is no need to use whole unground grains, either. You can just as easily use whole grain flour and soak the batter. Just click for my Coffee Cake recipe and Blender Batter Waffles.  Both are also delicious, though both of these are wheat free.

I am now the proud co-owner of a fantastic Skippy Grain Mill and have been experimenting wheat from our farm. I've been grinding it to make wholegrain wheat flour and have developed a great recipe for almost wholegrain bread. The preparation needs to begin the night before you want your bread as the flour is soaked overnight.
Find the recipe here.  Soaked Whole Wheat Bread


Megan

Blender Batter Coffee Cake - Wheat Free

I've just received all of Sue Gregg's recipe books. If you don't know who Sue Gregg is, she's an advocate of whole food cooking and teaches people how to cook the whole foods way.
She encourages soaking of grains a la Sally Fallon, another whole food champion.

When using whole grains, the outside of the grain, or bran is still intact so the grain is far more nutritious. However, there is a belief that the bran contains phytic acid which can cause malabsorption of certain minerals, particularly calcium. Therefore, soaking in an acid medium is recommended to break down this substance.
Soaking also makes whole grains easier to digest. Ancient peoples always soaked grains prior to using them for flour.
The problem with this method is that you generally need to start either first thing in the morning or the night before. I'm getting used to this as we've been incorporating more legumes into our diet, so each night before I go to bed, I stop and think.....'do I need to soak something before I turn in?'

This particular recipe only needed a three hour soak, so I played with it yesterday. Sue Gregg tends to use one flour whereas I like to blend together a mix of different ones. You can muck about with the blend to suit yourself or what you have in the pantry. Rolled oats, brown rice, kamut, quinoa would all be nice. I've used barley in this recipe and barley does contain gluten. However, the type of gluten in barley is much easier to digest than that found in wheat.

Her recipe used almonds and rolled oats for the topping, but I had some leftover pecan topping, so I just used that.
Oh, and there's no coffee, it's a type of cake, like a Tea Cake.

Pecan Coffee Cake
Batter
Blend on highest speed of blender or food processor until reasonably fine. (This took about two minutes in my TMX):
150g pearled barley
50g buckwheat
25g amaranth
25g millet

3/4 cup yoghurt or soured milk and 1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup warm honey

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
pinch salt

Topping:
80g rapadura or coconut sugar
50g toasted pecans
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon


For the batter, grind the grains and seeds in food processor or Thermomix until fine, about two to three minutes on high speed.
Add the liquid ingredients (except eggs), blend for a few seconds and leave to sit in a warm place for about three hours. I just left the batter in the Thermomix bowl. You could put it in the Thermoserver.

Meanwhile, make the topping by blending ingredients until crumbly. Set aside.


When ready to bake, preheat oven to 165C and grease and line a 20cm round or square tin.  Make sure lining goes above tin so you can pull cake out using lining. If you tip it upside down, the topping will go everywhere. (ask me how I know....)

Blend the batter for a couple of minutes. This will make the batter lovely and smooth since the grains are now soaked. Add the eggs to the batter and blend another minute or two. Add blended rising agents and spices and mix to incorporate.

Pour batter into prepared pan and sprinkle topping over. Press topping in gently with palm of hand. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until cake springs back when gently pressed. Remove to a wire rack.

Serve warm or cold.

Home Made Soy Milk

Soy Milk isn't everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but I've been having it in my tea and coffee for over 20 years now.
The Spring of 1994 was a very bad year for hay fever and I suffered badly. My hay fever didn't dissipate once Summer came. It went through to Autumn and Winter. After trying a few doctors who wanted to prescribe cortisone, I finally visited a Naturopath.

Back then (sounds like forever ago!), Naturopaths weren't considered to be health professionals by the government so there was no health rebates available.
Janelle immediately revised my diet and I was basically on a detox for 6 months. No dairy, no wheat, no yeast, no sugar, no alcohol. It was incredibly hard as there just wasn't the foods or ingredients readily available, especially where I lived. I lost about 5 kilos and I wasn't particularly big anyway.
But, my hay fever went away! I haven't suffered from hay fever in all that time. Maybe the occasional sniffle, but nothing to worry about....except for this year, but that's another blog post.

Since that time, I reintroduced all those items back into my diet but have found I'm not particularly fond of dairy anymore. I just can't stomach cow's milk in my tea and coffee and rarely eat cream. I like a little cheese and eat a lot of yoghurt, though!

Over the years I've been buying soy milk in the UHT cartons. There's only a couple of brands that I like and one of those is Vitasoy Vitacafe. I don't know how many of these little containers I've left at various places in all that time. I'd take one with me wherever I went so I could enjoy a cup of tea or coffee.

I have given some thought into making soy milk, but all the recipes I found were labour intensive and made litres of it at a time. However, recently I discovered that I could have been making it in my Thermomix all this time! I discovered that I have the book with recipe in it after browsing a Facebook page that I enjoy, Thermobexta.

The recipe comes from the Thermomix book, A Taste of Asia. I've changed it a little, so I believe I can post the recipe here. It's absolutely delicious. I also use it in my smoothies.

The okara that's left over can be used in vegie Burgers, meat loaf, sausage rolls etc.

Soy Milk

100g organic Soy Beans, soaked overnight in filtered water with either lemon juice or whey added
400g boiling filtered water

Add drained beans and water to TM bowl and blend on speed 8 for 1 minute.

600g water
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp maple syrup (or 1 Medjool date, de-seeded)
pinch salt

Scrape down and add remaining ingredients and cook for 10 minutes on 90, speed 2-3. Skim foam from the top.
Cook a further 2 minutes on 100, speed 2. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't boil over.
Cool to about 60.
Strain through muslin or a nut bag into a glass bottle. Refrigerate.

Keeps for about 4 days.