100% Sprouted Grain Pulp Bread

I’ve been developing a recipe for sprouted whole grain pulp bread, based on a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s Bread Revolution. A pulp bread uses no flour—instead, sprouted grain kernels are ground or mashed into a paste, which forms the basis of the dough. A common commercially available bread produced with this method is Food for Life’s Ezekiel Bread. Replicating that product in a home environment was the primary inspiration for this recipe. 

The Results:

The bread is very flavorful with a texture comparable to a supermarket multigrain bread. The sprouting process creates a complex flavor profile, so the bread tastes great despite the very short fermentation. The crumb is very slightly moist (think wonderbread), despite temping at 210 F. The crust is well done and crispy. The little bits of mashed grains give textural variety. The slices stand up well to peanut butter, sandwiches, etc and make great toast.

The Pulping Process:

I start by sprouting 50% hard red spring wheat and 50% spelt kernels. I won’t detail the sprouting process since there are numerous guides on that all around the internet, though I will mention that I stop the sprouting process before the shoots are longer than the grain kernel itself. Based on pre- and post- sprout weight, the grain absorbs 75% of its dry mass in water, so the grain pulp can be thought of as a 75% hydration dough. 

I use a LEM Big Bite #32 1.5 HP meat grinder to create the pulp. I feed the sprouted grain through three times—first through a coarse plate (10mm), then a fine plate (4.5mm), then finish on an extra fine plate (1/8 inch). At this point the pulp is an extremely sticky cohesive mass. Gluten development is great and the strands are very evident to the naked eye.

I believe the pulp can be used immediately to make a dough, but I generally put it into the refrigerator to use later in the day or the next day. The pulp can also be frozen with no ill effects—the bread in the pictures was baked with pulp that had been frozen in vacuum bags for several days and thawed in the refrigerator for another day before use. 

The Recipe:

My recipe, as well as the recipe from Reinhart’s book, is given in the following table. I’ll discuss the reasons for the deviations further below. The loaf in the pictures is based on 1kg dough weight, reflected below.

 *Vital Wheat Gluten

**Cracked grain mix at 59% hydration

The ingredients are put into a mixing bowl in the order presented, and mixed for about 5 minutes until a shaggy mass is formed. The dough then rests uncovered for 10 minutes. The dough is then kneaded for 5-10 minutes, or until the gluten is well developed. The dough will be quite sticky, and if kneading by hand I’d recommend rubbing your hands/kneading surface with a small amount of oil. I find that the gluten tends to be very well developed by the pulping process, and will sometimes stop kneading early if the dough begins to feel very tight. Target dough temp is 75 F.

Rest in an oiled mixing bowl, covered, for 15 minutes. Knead/fold a few more times, then form into a ball and back into the mixing bowl. Rest 20 minutes, covered. Form the ball into a pan loaf, and then place into a greased loaf pan (I used a 1lb aluminized steel USA pan). Cover with greased plastic wrap.

Proof for 30-45 minutes. I proof my loaves in a microwave alongside a coffee cup full of freshly boiled water. **The key is to not overproof!** Poke test at 30 minutes, and keep a close eye on the dough thereafter if not yet ready to bake. This dough proofs extremely quickly, and overproofing will result in a miserably dense and wet crumb. The pictured loaf proofed for about 35 minutes, and was not quite doubled in volume.

Slash diagonally across the loaf, holding the lame perpendicular to the surface of the dough. The slashes should be fairly deep.

Bake in a preheated 350 F oven for thirty minutes. A good amount of oven spring should occur. Rotate the pan and bake for a further thirty minutes. I place my pan directly on a half inch baking steel which was preheated in the oven, which I believe helps to firm/set/brown the bottom crust. The bread will temp close to 210 F. There is very little risk of drying out the crumb, so you can take the crust quite dark.

I would also recommend letting the bread cool outside of the pan on a wire rack in the oven with the door cracked to let moisture escape. This will help crisp up the sides and bottom crust and avoid pooched out sides. Let the loaf cool down all of the way to room temperature before slicing.

Notes:

• The primary deviations from the Reinhart recipe are the omission of the molasses, honey, and soaker, and baking at a lower temperature of 350 F instead of Reinhart’s 380 F. The added molasses and sugar contributed good flavor and aided browning, but resulted in a more tacky/sticky crumb that my taste testers did not prefer. I think the soaker is fine to add—I just omitted in an attempt to simplify the recipe and remove variables as I perfected the process and bake. In my experience, baking at the lower temperature resulted in better and more even browning, particularly on the sides and bottom crust.
• The biggest pitfall in this recipe is overproofing the dough. Reinhart recommends proofing 1 to 1.5 hours and doubling in volume, but I found that every loaf I proofed in that manner fell in the oven and resulted in a very dense, gummy, wet crumb reminiscent of not-very-good brownies. The major breakthrough in this recipe for me was proofing a shorter amount of time in the warm, humid microwave as described above.
• Work to generate as much tension as possible in the gluten sheath when forming the dough ball into a pan loaf.
• Sprouting the grains improves the nutritional content and digestibility of the bread.
• A loaf can finish baking less than three hours from the point that you measure the ingredients, and the grain pulp may be frozen and thawed. This recipe is a good weeknight bake since it can easily be finished between dinner and bedtime.
• Ezekiel Bread includes additional sprouted grains and beans in the pulp. My recipe focuses on wheat for the sake of simplicity, but future experiments will focus on these additional ingredients.
• It might be possible to eliminate (or reduce) the vital wheat gluten and the sugar in the recipe. Because the sprouting process converts some starch in the grain into sugar, there is more sugar in the pulp than would be present in a flour-based dough. Eliminating the added sugar might require a longer proofing period if the yeast are less active. Reinhart discusses the necessity of adding the vital wheat gluten to compensate for diminished gluten quality resulting from the sprouting process. However, my experience has been that gluten development is excellent in the pulp, and I suspect supplementing with vital wheat gluten might be unnecessary. Future experiments will focus on reducing these ingredients.

Very happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback. There is very little information on pulp breads available, so I would welcome anyone willing to try the recipe and help advance our collective knowledge! Thanks for reading.