milling mondays: sprouted grains

 

i leave you this monday with some pictures of my sprouted grains i sprouted for malt last week.

milling mondays: coconana oat cookies

These cookies combine the wonderful taste of things I love: coconut, bananas, and oats. What a great combination. These soft, moist cookies have such a wonderful taste with just the right amount of sweetness. And they are somewhat healthy for being in the cookies category and even vegan too. They are also super easy to make. All in all, a great yummy cookie.

Coconana Oat Cookies

modified from the recipes for ibs cookbook

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Ingredients

3 ripe bananas, mashed

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup agave nectar

1/2 cup oil

1 Tbsp coconut milk

1 cup oat flour (steel cut oats if you mill your own flour)

1tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup shredded coconut

yields about two dozen cookies

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a blender, mix together the bananas, vanilla extract, applesauce, agave nectar and oil

 

If you mill your own flour, grind steel cut oats to make oat flour. I of course use my WonderMill.

Add the flour, baking soda and cinnamon to the mixture in the blender and blend it all together.

 

Fold in the oats and coconut.

 

Finally, scoop the cookie dough onto your baking stone/greased cookie sheet and bake the cookies for about 18 minutes.



 

Let the cookies cool on a rack.

 

Enjoy!

 

milling mondays: danish rye bread with seeds and carrots

 

 

As I have mentioned before, Danes love their rye bread. It is a lunch stable for most people in Denmark. It therefore makes sense that there are lots of different versions with different types of additions in it. The one that I am really liking right now is filled with lots of seeds and carrots. It is moist and full of goodness.

 

 

Danish Rye Bread with Seeds and Carrots (Rugbroed)

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Ingredients

 

Sour dough starter - check out my blog post on how to make the starter

375g whole wheat flour (hard wheat berries)

375g rye flour (rye berries)

5 tsp salt

1/2 L water

500g seeds/grains (I used 175g sunflower seeds, 175g pumpkin seeds, 50g flaxseed (roughly ground), 50g sesame seeds, 50g steel cut oats)

2 carrots, peeled and grated

1/2 bottle dark beer

 

 

 

Directions

 

If you mill your own flour, grind your wheat and rye berries. I of course use my WonderMill.

 

Knead together the wheat and rye flour, salt, water and sour dough starter.

 

 

 

 

Let the dough sit covered for 24 hours.

 

Once the dough has rested for a day, add in all of our seeds/grains, carrots and beer and blend together to form a dough.

 

Remove about 300g of the rye bread dough and set aside to use as the sourdough starter the next time you make this recipe. Store it in the fridge in a closed container. Note, this means you don't have to make the sourdough starter from scratch the next time.

 

Pour the dough into your greased bread pans (1-2 depending on the size). Cover them and let them rise for 4-5 hours (you wont really notice  a whole lot of difference in the size of the bread before and after).

 

 

Pre-heat your oven to 395F. And let the bread bake for 70 minutes.

 

 

Danish rye bread is dense and its crust can become quite hard. In order to remedy this, take the warm bread and wrap it in a kitchen towel and place it in a bpa free plastic bag/zip top bag.
 

Let the bread cool in the bag while the moisture softens the crust. Let it sit overnight before cutting it.

ENJOY!

 

milling mondays: 100% whole wheat bread

this post first appeared on the grain mill wagon

Before I started milling my own flour I would bake my own bread.  So when I decided I wanted to start milling my own flour, I knew I would probably bake bread often.  I like the idea of making bread that actually has some nutritional value.

This recipe is great not only for baking sandwich bread, but I also use it to bake hamburger buns.

100% Whole Wheat Bread

Modified original recipe from King Arthur Flour
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Ingredients:

3 ½ cups whole wheat flour (about 2 cups hard white wheat berries)

1/4 cup dry milk

1 packet active dry yeast (2 ½ tsp instant yeast)

1/8 cup molasses (or honey)

4 Tbsp applesauce (or oil or a combination of the two)

1 ¼ tsp salt

1 tsp diastatic malt

1 ¼ cups lukewarm water

This recipe yields one loaf. I often double the recipe and make two loaves so I don’t have to bake every week or I make one loaf and some hamburger buns.

Directions:

Grind about 2 cups of hard white wheat berries. This should yield around 3 ½ cups of whole wheat flour.  I of course use my WonderMill.

In a glass or small bowl mix yeast with 2 Tbsp lukewarm water and add a little molasses or honey to feed/activate the yeast.  Let it sit and work while adding the other ingredients together.

Mix 2 cups of freshly ground whole wheat flour together with the dry milk.  The rest of the flour will be added later.

Then add the apple sauce, molasses, salt and malt.  To read my blog post about how to make diastatic malt please go here.  Malt can help the bread rise, give a great texture and brown the crust.

Add the proofed yeast to the mixture.

Use the same container the yeast was mixed in to collect the water needed for the recipe. This trick will help include the remaining yeast left on the sides of the container. Add the water to the mixture.

Mix all the ingredients together. I use my KitchenAid stand mixer.  Once all the ingredients are in the mixer I mix them together using the dough hook on setting 2.  Slowly add the remaining flour if needed until the dough gets the right consistency. You want the dough to be wet, but at the same time you want to use enough flour to allow the dough to come together. Let the mixer mix for about 8 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl and cover it. Let it rise until it is puffy but no more than doubled in bulk. For me that is about 1 hour – but don’t let it rise for more than 2 hours.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface and shape it into an 8” log. Place the log in a lightly greased 8 ½x4 ½ “ loaf pan. Cover the pan and allow the bread to rise until the center has crowned about one inch above the rim of the pan. It usually takes me about 30-45 minutes – but don’t let it rise more than 2 hours.

Towards the end of the rising time, pre-heat the oven to 350F.

Once the oven is pre-heated and the bread is done rising, bake the bread for about 30 minutes.  The finished loaf should be about 190F inside.

When it is done remove the bread from the pan and let it cool on a rack.

Enjoy! This bread is moist and delicious AND nutritious.

 

milling mondays: malt

this post first appeared on the grain mill wagon

The first thing I wanted to make with my new grain mill (the WonderMill) was bread. Before I started milling my own flour I would from time to time bake my own bread. I, therefore, thought it would be good to begin my milling experience with baking bread.  When I was researching about milling and baking bread I learned it can be good to include malt.  Diastatic malt to be exact.

Diastatic malt helps the yeast grow and in turn promotes a good rise, great texture and brown crust. All which will help make my homemade bread better. And now that I have a grain mill I thought I might as well make the malt myself. I found good directions on ehow.com that I used.  Since I had never made malt before I opted for just making half the recipe the first time around.

Since I don't have a sprouting jar I just used a vase with a wide mouth. I filled the vase with two cups of lukewarm water and one cup of hard red wheat berries. I then used a clean nylon no-show sock (it already has elastic built in so I didn't have to use a rubber band to fasten it to the vase).

 

I left the grains in the water overnight (about 12 hours). I then turned the vase upside down and let all the water drain through the nylon sock. As you can see in the picture below, the grains had already started sprouting a little. 

For the next 4 hours I left the vase propped at an angle upside down to let any water left drain meanwhile allowing air to still circulate. After 4 hours I rinsed the grains with water. I repeated this rinse and drain process 3 times that day (every 4 hours).  The directions say to repeat the process for two days unless the sprouts become as long as the grains themselves. After a day and a half, mine did - so I stopped the process early (only rinsing and draining once the second day instead of the directed 3).

 

Since I don't have a dehydrator, I used a cookie sheet to dry out the grains. I turned on my oven to the lowest possible temperature and then turned it back off after 5 minutes. I placed all the sprouted grains on a cookie sheet. I then put the cookie sheet with the wheat berries in the hot turned off oven for 3 hours. I then removed the cookie sheet, turned on the oven again and repeated the heating and turning off step. I repeated this step 3 times. 

After the third time in the oven, the berries were completely dry.

I then put the dried berries in my WonderMill and turned it into a flour. And voila - malt! When baking bread I usually use 1 teaspoon malt for every 3 cups of flour.

It may seem like this is a lot of work. And it is:) But you don't have to make it very often (it goes a long way) and you don't have to stare at it for two whole days during the sprouting process:)

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