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Thursday, December 08, 2011

Sprouted Grain Bread

I discovered something new today. It is known as sprouted grain bread. It is a flourless bread made entirely of grain that are allowed to germinate and sprout. It is like taking those alfalfa sprout you can buy at supermarket and then blend them and mash them up, mix with other sprouted grain and bake them over low heat.
Doing some research to understand it, this technique came from the Essene people - a Jewish religious group that became popular a very long time ago, or claimed to be 2BC to 1AD. The group believe in eating whole food and devised a way to prepare the bread without losing its nutritional value.
The original bread are made using a
mixture of different sprouted grains. Wheat being the main choice followed by rye, millet, corn and soy beans. These are easily available grains even in organic form.
All "No" and "Free". Funny how things with nothing extra added cost more!
Bread made from sprouted grain retains all the nutritional values of the grain unlike processed flour. In fact, sprouted bread has potentially more nutrition due to the sprouting of the grain - very much like having alfalfa sprout instead if just the seeds. Make sense!
The slow cooking of the bread preserves the nutritional value of the grains. I was super surprised to find there were minimal ingredient other than the whole grains used to bake the bread. Usage of honey, molasses, corn oil and yeast was about the only other non-grain found in the bread.
Honey and molasses are used to sweeten the bread while allowing/providing the yeast food so it will "raise" the bread. The usage of molasses in replacement of sugar is a good choice as it allows the bread to have a lower GI value but yet retain the goodness of dark sugar. Honey i believe could be a choice to leave out and corn oil can be replaces with olive or grape seed oil.
Should we now MOOOooooo together?
The bread is made for Adventist Hospital Bakery in Penang. 2 slices of this bread give you 141kcal with good nutritional value especially on the low GI carb linked to the usage of grains. They are available at Jaya Grocer at Jaya 33 - which is below my current office and that was how i chance upon the bread.
Address and a breakdown of the grain goodness!
I would say it is a blardy good find! Apparently, this has been around for the past decade! What had i missed?! Now that i know what it is, we might try to replicate it at home. At RM6.60 for a Loaf of 450gram bread, it is the most expensive bread i bought to date. But it potentially could feed me over 3 lunches and that works out to be RM2.20/meal for about 400kcal (or 6 slices) value - which is all i need to power me through between breakfast and dinner with the profile of a sedentary person sitting down doing desk work everyday.
Way better than 2 pieces of Roti Canai.
Here is another motivation - Lance featured this on his website. Now you know what it takes to be a strong accomplished athlete with cancer history put into his system.

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