Ancient bread sprouts anew

Ingredients date to biblical times

Sprouted bread. (Styling by Ted Weesner Jr; Photo by Essdras Suarez/Globe Staff)

In recent years bread has found itself in an increasingly contentious relationship with the general public. Sales have flat-lined, and to dieters everywhere the staff of life has come to equal unwanted carbs - otherwise known as poison. In an effort to resuscitate the market, breadmakers have festooned just about every package with the words "whole" or "multi-grain," which usually ranslates to a little or even a lot of whole-wheat flour, plus some seeds. But there are a few bakeries - until recently fringey and on the West Coast - that make bread not from flour but from whole sprouted grains. Sprout a grain and you get a protein punch as robust as any powdered shake or bowl of beans. Sprouted bread, it could be said, is officially in the nation's culinary zeitgeist.

According to some, sprouted bread has been around since biblical times. Witness a couple of sprouted bread bestsellers named after holy scripture. (Ezekiel 4:9 reads: "Take also unto thee Wheat, and Barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and Spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it.") To the more romantically inclined, those are sprouting instructions and a recipe with one seriously long pedigree. Meanwhile, the cynics in the crowd suspect this is a fad concocted by a few crafty marketers.

I was a skeptic - on multiple levels. The first provocation was my wife, who came home with packages of sprouted bread refrigerator-shipped from California, favoring this distinctly un-local fare to the artisanal loaves I was pulling from the oven every week. My cries of "But this is fresh-baked bread!" were met with her stares. I was further piqued by the little "©" on her packages that follows the verses from Ezekiel and Genesis. Copyrighting scripture from the Bible? Are you kidding? This is the sort of challenge the avid home cook does not take lightly.

So I consulted bread fanatic Peter Reinhart, a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and the author of six books on baking. His recipe for sprouted bread in "Whole Grain Breads" appeared to be incredibly simple, if passively time-consuming (letting those grains sprout). I raided the local health-food store, loading up on ingredients from the Bible's recipe, adding also mung beans and rye berries, and set them aside to soak. After a couple days little tails appeared. Was stuff really growing in my kitchen in the dead of winter? Eureka! I proceeded to food-process the sprouts and then mix them with yeast, honey, salt, and a touch of wheat gluten.

A side note: According to Reinhart, because wheat sprouts contain less gluten than wheat flour due to chemical changes in the grain during germination, adding vital wheat gluten "strengthens the dough and guarantees a high rise and lighter loaf." At the same time, using too much can result in a rubbery texture. I decided to give my loaves a little of the gluten pick-me-up.

Still, I remained a staunch unbeliever. Could this mush really compete with a carefully cultivated sourdough starter? I mixed the dough for five minutes or so in a stand mixer and was surprised to see it come together into a tacky ball. I plopped it out onto a water-misted work surface and let it rise for a couple of minutes, which allows for the absorption of water and causes the dough to become more pliant. After letting the dough rise in an oiled bowl for an hour, I cut the dough in two and formed a log for a buttered bread pan and a tight ball for my floured willow basket - a cloth napkin-lined bowl also works - to make a round free-standing loaf.

In 40 minutes I was en route to ardent believer, having produced, by the sworn word of all bystanders, about the tastiest loaf of bread ever. One friend declared, "It makes other bread seem like a saltine" and "You feel sated and replenished - it's like a whole new relationship between your body and bread." Another: "Food for hibernation." The taste was so densely flavorful and textured, it could be likened to drinking your first cup of fresh-ground coffee after a lifetime of Maxwell House.

And then you have to consider the remarkable health benefits conferred when grains sprout, which Reinhart writes allow for "a quantum leap nutritionally" and a more "body accessible" slice. When grains begin to germinate, he says, "three main chemical changes occur. The seeds begin to break down due to increased enzyme activity, elements of the seed begin to move around between the endosperm and the germ, and new molecules are formed. In the process, vitamin content and accessibility is increased, especially vitamins A, B-complex, and C, minerals like calcium, potassium and iron are released, and the carbohydrates become more easily digested."

Reinhart's favorite commercial sprouted bread is made by the Alvarado Street Bakery in Petaluma, Calif. (available at some Whole Foods Markets and Super Stop & Shops). Joseph Tuck, the chief executive officer of Alvarado - a worker-owned company that has its roots in progressive '70s politics - traces sprouted bread back to a 1930s bakery in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet whether the recipe was first swapped in Aramaic or Depression-era English, skeptics are likely to be made believers in the tasting.