After posting only exercise tips lately, I thought it was time to share a recipe again! We have been baking our own bread with our Panasonic bread machine for 18 years now – which I remember as we bought our first machine shortly after our first daughter was born (and our second 10 years later)! We started with ready mixes, then switched to single ingredients, and after five years we used only spelt flour. About eight years ago I have also been experimenting with making a pumpernickel type of bread from sprouted grains in the slow cooker. That was very dense bread, and I wanted to see if I could bring over the healthy benefits of sprouts into a lighter bread that my whole family would enjoy. Of course this bread can be baked in the oven as well.
I have introduced the use of soaked or sprouted grains already in my pizza dough recipe. I use the same idea in the bread recipe, but add the zucchini only if we have a surplus of yellow zucchini from our community plot garden – which is right now 😉
Ingredients:
- 40g dry chickpeas
- 110g spelt grains
- water (or blended zucchini and water) – amount see below
- 30g butter or deodorized coconut fat
- 1 tsp dry instant yeast (or 20g fresh yeast*)
- 150g whole-grain spelt flour
- 300g refined spelt flour (hell in CH, type 630 in DE)
- 2 tsp salt (preferably unrefined)
- (optional) 100-150 gr seeds: Linseed, chia, sesame, sunflower and/or pumpkin
Directions:
One or two days before making bread, soak the chickpeas and spelt grain in water for 8-12 hours. Drain well and let it stand in a bowl or jar for another 8-12 hours* In this time a lot of changes already happen inside the seeds, making them easier to digest, and activating enzymes that will work on the flour that you add to the dough too.
Place the drained chickpeas and spelt in a blender jar and add water till they are just covered and blend till smooth. If adding zucchini, blend about 150gr zucchini with 2 tbsp water till liquid. Add the drained chickpeas and spelt and blend till smooth. In both cases, if to dry to blend smoothly, add a bit more water.
Put a bowl or the container of your bread machine on a balance, tar to zero or note the weight. Add the yeast, flour, salt and the mix from the blender. Add water to a total ingredient weight of 1000 gr. Add the seeds and start the bread machine on the whole wheat or spelt program.
* Sprouting can also been continued up to 2 days, washing them with water twice a day, and if I am not ready to use it then, I store them in the fridge for up to another 2 days. If you do not see sprouts appearing, the spelt and/or chickpeas must have been heat treated, look for another brand then! I have used only dry yeast for all these years, but during the Covid-19 lockdown this became scarce in the stores. Fresh yeast was still available, so I switched to that, I mix it in with the blended grains and that works fine, that way is only not suitable for overnight programs