I am new to the forum. I live in South Africa where I own a home bakery with two wood-burning ovens. One is the traditional clay oven and the other a masonry oven. Both are heavilly insuated for bread baking. I specialise in organic sour-dough breads, pizzas, bread rolls and sour-dough muffins.
One of my customers asked about Essene Bread or Essence read. I wondered if anyone on the forum has experience with these breads.
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Comment via Facebook:
....we've made essene bread several times....basically just sprouted wheat, ground, shaped into 'patties, and baked at a very low temperature....sweet and chewy....delicious! (especially if you add dates and/or raisins and maybe some pecans)......and sea salt!
Can you give specific amount regarding the recipe Maedi? It would be helpful..
Thanks
Unfortunately I can only give you the link to the persons profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1000184770
If you scroll down far enough you can view where the original comment was made:
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I too have made essene bread quite a few times. Usually comes out really good. The trick in sprouting the wheat berries is not to let the sprout get to long. No more than 1 and 1/2 x the length of the berry itself. Seems to go from sugar to starch and become bitter when longer. I have ground the sprouts in a food processor and in a meat grinder. Meat grinder gives the best results. Good results are using a step down approach to grinding the sprouts. The second grinding much smaller holes. Oh what a mess! But the results are worth it. It takes a bit of time for the grinding, forming, clean up process. So Sprout a lot. If you are going to do it you might as well make it worth your time. I added rasins, or figs, or dates, cherries dried or blueberries. All or one or two. Does not matter the combo. To me all are good. Baked, dried out in the oven at 200 degrees, it is hard to tell when done. It is done before you start because all are edible before baking. I wrap each loaf in brandy soaked cheese cloth and store in the back of the fridge. For months, some almost one year. No loss of flavor, only tastes better. It travels well. That is my favorite way.
The other way I ground or macerated sprouts in the food processor. The more you run it the more it resembles dough. One loaf without the yeast was an inedible brick. The yeast one rose a bit. No salt. Not good. Should have left it all to rise much longer and treated it like the dough ball it was. Probably won't do that again.