Bibical Bread Fiasco and What I Learned About Sprouting

I am sorry to report that my sprouted wheat bread was a flop!   :(

So...last time I showed my nicely sprouting sprouts and was excited to go home and make Essene (bread made only of sprouts).  But, those crazy little sprouts grew and grew while I worked that day and when I returned home they were about twice the length of the grains!  If you remember, I was supposed to make bread out of them when the sprouts were just 1/3 the size of the grain.

The Good News:  Sprouts are SO sweet and yummy...crunchy and chewy.

The Bad News:  If I want to try this again I am going to have to give in and buy a food processor.  I may enjoy chopping veges and being close to the food, but crushing these sprouted wheat berries into a gooey dough would take a large rough stone mortar and pestle and more energy than I have.  

So, I am planning on buying a small cheap food processor and trying again...now realizing that when I see those sprouts emerge, I have to bake bread right then!

I went ahead and tried to grind the sprouts to see if I could make it into some kind of bread.  I ground it with my smooth wooden pestle which just slipped around.  It did crush the wheat berries causing a milky sticky white stuff to come out, but my efforts did nothing to break down the hulls.  

Next, I tried putting the sprouts between two pieces of wax paper and rolling them stubbornly with my rolling pin.  Same result basically....gooey insides popped out, but chewy hulls intact AND it sticks to the wax paper.  I did this with just a couple handfuls of the sprouts.  I still had two mason jars half filled with the sprouts so I decided to just keep growing them for a few days and see what happens next.

Finally, I just picked as much as I could off of the wax paper, made a cookie shape, and baked it in the oven at 170 for several hours.  The result was a teeth jarring little cracker tasting item that we threw out after tasting.  More Good News:  The little pieces we were able to eat were tasty!  Kind of like wheat thins.  

So, when I try again with the food processor, I think I will roll some out thin and try to make some crackers. 


SO, WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THESE DARN SPROUTS???

1) I found a bread recipe that was made with standard flour but called for a cup of sprouts.  I am working on that today and will post the recipe if it turns out well.

2) We are putting some on salads.  Very sweet...almost too sweet.

3) I was madly googling about sprouts and what to do with sprouts and found a post of someone who dries them in the oven at a very low temp and then grinds them into a flour, so I am working on that today as well.

Hope this saves some work for someone else who might try this.  Lessons learned.  :)