Soaked / Sprouted Grains in Sourdough
Bread is simple. It's really hard to mess up. In general if we mix things properly and wait for the proper fermentation time we will get bread. I've been successful in my bread making for a few years now and have a few loafs I can reliably produce without much thought....so of course that means it's time to do new things and over analyze every possible choice that can be made.
I want to make some bread with sprouted wheat/kamut/spelt berries. I'm not planning to go through the process of sprouting, drying, and then grinding into flour, and as such I have a few fairly straight forward questions.
1. If I have sprouted the grains are they just considered a mix-in like adding toasted seeds?
2. If treated as a mix-in what is the general advice for a bakers percentage for the mix-in? I've seen everything from 10% to over 50%. I'm sure this can be done to taste but is there a standard mix-in percentage?
3. If I grind the sprouted seeds up into a paste does that then get added to a recipe as flour (which is already hydrated)? Assuming yes and that I then need to account for the weight when figuring out inoculation percentages for the levain.
Anything else of important note to be aware of?
Sensei,
My first instinct is treat them like a soaker. In other words, make your dough then incorporate the sprouts as if they neither add nor subtract moisture. It’s kind of counterintuitive but that’s what the BBA recommends for soakers.
Back when I first made sandwich breads with rehydrated bulgur or steel cut oats, I tested adjusting dough hydration with and without the soaker weight gain post-hydration and got best results by disregarding the soaker liquid component.
Not sure if this would change in the ground sprouts scenario since you might be releasing a lot more enzymes into the dough solution. Maybe some of the TFL microbiologists would have an opinion…
Phil