I recently stumbled across a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads and was enthralled with all the wonderful recipes for making whole grain breads of all shapes and sizes. The cookbook includes detailed pictures, tips and tricks on how to make artisan breads, all from whole wheat and other whole grains! Pizza dough, pita bread, naan, and many others. Not only that, but this book includes soaking steps for most of the recipes! The funny thing is the author shares about the benefits of soaking your grains from a different unique angle altogether. These are his thoughts, which I found very facinating:
“The primary function of a soaker is to soften uncooked ground grains by soaking them first in water (or milk)…When grain is milled, it can no longer germinate because the grain has been crushed, destroying the embryo. However, when soaked it will still break down and release its sugar threads as the enymes go to work. So, while one purpose of soakers is to soften the grain, an equally important purpose is to release flavor and introduce enzyme activity. When added to dough, soakers, whether made with whole or milled grains, change the way the dough performs, usually sweetening it and creating a richer, more golden crust.”
So not only will soaking break down the phytates in the grain, making it more easily digestible, but it will also increase the sweetness and softness of your final product! I have definitely found this to be so! Although I probably would not follow the exact directions for soaking as described in this book, I have found several recipes I can not wait to try…all made entirely from whole grains! Bring on the whole wheat Challah and Naan!
I have that book and it certainly is useful for experimenting with breads. Do you have a particular favourite?
Love your blog! great resource!
I’ve been sending the link to Amazon for this book to my husband every three days since you posted this book! My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and this is all I have asked for!
I finally checked this book out at the library. I wanted to jump right in with the recipes, but he kept saying to read the first few chapters first. So I did, and I highly recomend it, they really are informative and helpful when it acutally comes to trying a recipe out! I tried my frist recipe today, YUM!! wonderful texture and flavor, I was amazed and facisnated:) (I hadn’t soaked at all before). I’m excited to try the other recipes and continue to improve on the one I tried. I used active yeast and it worked fine, but instant would be alot easier. Anyone know any good stores to buy bulk instant yeast?
Thanks so much Lindsay for this very informative and helpful blog! It has made such a difference in my homemaking:)
I just (and I do mean JUST) read this same thing in Sue Gregg’s Whole Grain Baking!!! And I can attest – it really does make a difference to soak the grains; the quality is really great (yummy!). I HIGHLY recommend this technique!!
Happy baking,
Annie
Fascinating. You ALMOST have me converted. I’m from the old school of bread making, so this soaking thing is slowly soaking in. (HAR) All the bread makers my age are new to this, so I’ll be the first to introduce it to my friends.. thank the Lord for the godly young moms and wives who are keeping us current. It seems like I was so into nutrition when our kids were little, and then we started homeschooling and moving and decorating and moving a lot and … so on. This issue is coming full circle again for me, and I’m hoping to get healthier too.
That’s exciting! I would like to track down this book and try it. Especially the naan bread you mention! Thanks for sharing.
Oooh, I am definitely going to have to check out that book. I have been in a bread making mood lately (or should I say a bread-eating mood?) and those recipes look delicious. Thanks for sharing!
I love your site!
I was wondering…have you ever looked into books by Annalise G. Roberts? She has one called Gluten-free Baking Classics. I haven’t tried any of the recipes (yet) but I’ve never seen so many favorable reviews of a gluten-free cookbook on Amazon. She uses a mixture of grains to supplement the lack of wheat, and from what I read the results are fantastic. I have the book in the library where I work, and I may take it home and try it out. If/when I do, I’ll try to let you know the results.
Love it! I’m asking my husband if I can buy it right now! Only one more year until I will not have to work anymore so I’ll have plenty of time to make all the bread I want!!!
I have to tell you, in the last month I have learned so much from your website. We have begun soaking our grains and have tried many of your delicious recipes. I have made your bread recipe a couple times, but my loaves have been quite dense, even with dough enhancers. I just checked Peter Reinhart’s book out from the library last week, and have made the basic sandwich bread and the cinnamon rolls, and both were perfect! I did leave the salt out of the soaker and added a little yogurt to the biga for the sandwich bread because of recommendations about soaking I have read. I highly recommend the book and look forward to trying more of the recipes.
Perfect! I’ve been using the Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day method, which is wonderful, but I wasn’t crazy about the results with whole wheat. So I have been looking for some better baking options with whole wheat. Perfect timing! Sometimes I wonder why I blog, because we seem to think and talk about the same things, lol.
My family just opened our very first bakery where we grind our wheat and bake the bread from it daily. While the business has been very sucessful so far, we had a very difficult time baking whole wheat bread that was sellable at first. For some reason, the methods we used at home for years, didn’t work at our bakery. Our bread was turning out lumpy, dense and crumbly. We’ve all had those loaves before, right? Interestingly enough, when we began to soak the wheat flour overnight following the Sue Gregg method, we began to produce wonderful, soft, flexable, and flavorful whoe wheat bread. While most of our customers aren’t aware of the benefits of soaked wheat(or the fact that we soak ours) I love knowing that we are offering the healthiest product available!
I really like Peter Reinhart’s books. I haven’t tried too much from the whole grain book, yet, though. I might have to get that one out of the library!
~Kate
“Which Proverbs 14:1 Woman?”
http://proverbs14-1.blogspot.com
I really like the pizza dough recipe in this book. Also, he reduces the kneading time a lot with his “two-day” method.