How to Make Sprouted Wheat Flour or Diastatic Malt

Sprouted wheat is highly nutritious and surprisingly sweet. It is much easier for the body to digest since much of the starch is changed into vegetable sugars. Make it into flour and you have a great addition to your home ground flour. Also, if you spend a lot of money on diastatic malt powder, you can now save that money! This sprouted wheat flour is diastatic malt powder!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• glass jar
• cheese cloth
• rubber band
• red hard winter wheat berries
• filtered water
• oven or food dehydrator
• cookie sheet (if using oven)

1. 
    
   berries covered in water

   Use a jar that will allow for one part wheat berries and three parts water. Rinse your wheat berries well to remove all dirt and foreign objects. Put the berries into the jar and fill it with water. Cover the jar with a three to four layers of cheese cloth, and put the rubber band around the cloth to keep it on the jar. Let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.

2. 
    
   draining water from berries

   For this step you do not have to remove the cheesecloth. Dump the water out into a bowl to use in bread, soups, or for watering your garden or house plants. Rinse the berries in fresh water. Dump out the water, and let the berries rest again for three to six hours. If the berries have not begun to sprout within six hours, repeat this step.

3. 
    
   sprouted berries

   When the berries have a sprout 1/8 inch long, rinse them one more time, and dump out the water. Spread the berries out onto a drying rack without holes if drying in a dehydrator and on a cookie sheet if drying in the oven. Keep the drying temperature below 120 degrees Fahrenheit to preserve the nutrients. Dry for six hours. Make sure the berries are completely dry. See the tips below for oven drying.

4. Store your berries in an airtight container until you will grind them.
   Grind them to fine flour by pulsing it in a food processor or coffee grinder or putting them through a flour mill right before you use them.

Tips & Warnings

• If your oven does not go down to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, turn it on to the lowest setting for 5 minutes every hour until the grains are dry.
• If your oven has a warming drawer set it to medium low, and put the berries in to dry.
• Shelf life: in the pantry is about 3-5 months, the refrigerator is 5-7 months, the freezer is 7-12 months.
• Use this flour in place of diastatic malt in bread recipes.
• When grinding it is important to use pulse so as not to raise the temperature too high. You don't want to kill the enzymes after all the care you've put into making your dried sprouts!

[shoopgirl]

on 5/4/2009 drfugawe, thanks for making the use of this powder understood for future readers. I guess I was thinking that the "substituting" part meant that you would substitute your own inexpensive homemade diastatic malt powder for the expensive store/online bought malt powder. I should change the title to reflect this. Good catch-thanks!

[drfugawe]

on 5/4/2009 Actually, shoopgirl, what you have described here IS diastatic malt, not a substitute! Potential users need to know that the use of diastatic malt in bread making is done in very small amounts - for example, 1 teaspoon is all that's needed to make 4-5 loaves of bread - if too much is used, the yeasts work too quickly and die. The diastatic malt, in small amounts, creates an enzymatic environment which more efficiently changes starches to sugars, and assists the yeasts and bacteria to work more efficiently. It's one of nature's magic elements, and yes, it can be make with any grain, but barley and wheat most often.

[sproutsnsprouts]

on 1/16/2009 can you tells us the difference in nutritional facts between sprouted wheat flour and non-sprouted wheat flour?

[sproutsnsprouts]

on 1/16/2009 Can you tells us the differences in nutritionalfacts between sprouted wheat flour and non-sprouted wheat flour?

[shoopgirl]

on 1/6/2009 Yes. It is amazing what you can do with sprouting!