Sprouting Wheat Bread (Weizenkeimbrot)

This was the first bread I made that has no other grains than wheat in it. Wheat flour of course and also sprouting wheat. The latter takes a little bit preparation, so make sure you start the sprouting process 3 days before you want to bake the bread. Also one of the few recipes without sourdough. The sprouting wheat berries give it a nice crunch.

This recipe results in a very large bread, if you want to make it you may want to consider using 2/3 of the ingredients listed here. I didn't want to adjust the recipe though, since I like to post exactly what I did.

Sprouting Wheats

• 200g (7oz) wheat berries
• Water to cover

Start 3 days before baking day: Transfer berries into a shallow bowl and cover with 2cm (1 inch) of lukewarm water. Cover and let the berries swell for 24 hours.

Then browse the berries thouroughly with lukewarm water, drain, transfer back (wet) into the bowl and cover again. Let the berries swell again for 48 hours, browsing them with lukewarm water every morning and night. The berries should now have sprouted.

Sponge

• 500g (1 lb 1 5/8oz) all purpose wheat flour
• 250ml (1/2 cup) lukewarm water
• 40g (1 1/2oz) wet yeast (no typo, it's really that much) - You can probably use dry active yeast too, this would equate to 11 tsp but since it is that much I didn't do that. To get it started stir the dry yeast into 286ml (1 cup 1/8 oz) or so water and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until smooth. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Main Dough

• Sponge
• 500g (1 lb 1 5/8oz) all purpose wheat flour
• Sprouting wheat (browse with lukewarm water again and drain before use)
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 2 Tbsp honey
• 3 Tbsp oil
• 125ml (1/4 cup) lukewarm water

Add all the ingredients to the sponge and knead for 20 minutes with the dough hook. As mentioned before this is a pretty big dough, so I had to stop the machine multiple times and get the dough off the hook. I also ended up kneading a little bit by hand inside the bowl at the end as that seemed more effective.

Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough, cover and let swell for 1 1/2 hours at room temperature. Due to the amount of dough and yeast I didn't use the lid that comes with the mixing bowl but rather covered it tightly with 2 layers of plastic wrap. It still pushed up quite a lot:

Cover a baking sheet with parchement paper, form the dough into an oval shape and transfer to the baking sheet. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rest at room temperature for another 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 395°F (200°C).

Cut cross-ways into the surface of the dough and brush multiple times with cold water. Place a shallow, heat-resistant bowl with water on the bottom of the oven and place baking sheet on the lowest level. Bake for 1 hour. To ensure if the bread is done knock on the bottom, it should sound a little hollow.

Let the bread cool on a cooling rack (ideally first in turned off oven with open door, then on rack, but I didn't do that).

Original recipe by Annette Wolter in "Brot leicht gemacht" published by GU.