Playing with Grains

For breakfast one morning I made soaked oatmeal.  The challenge had said that soaking was the way to go for better nutrient absorption, so I got some steel cut oats and tried it.  The oats were soaked overnight in water with a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice (yes, we still have lemons!)  Then they were cooked with milk, dried cranberries and finished with a sprinkle of toasted pecans.  It was yummy and we both liked it.  However, we also both decided that we really prefer the texture of rolled oats. 

So what to do with all the rest of the steel cut oats?

Over on the Nourished Kitchen site there was a recipe for Buttermilk Oat Biscuits.  Since I have a grain grinder I decided to grind the steel cut oats into the flour called for in the recipe.  I set it to soak and pondered the rest of the instructions.  The comments were pretty universal in stating that the batter was much too liquid to actually roll out biscuits.  The author not only lives at high elevation (needing more liquid is common in high altitude baking recipes) but also said she really added a lot of flour when patting out the dough. Also, I just was leery of the little cubes of butter idea.  Since they weren't being cut into the flour as usual, I was worried the cubes would form little butter puddles during baking.  Finally, there were comments like "hockey pucks" and "flat" so I knew the leavening needed to be played with.

In the end, I used 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of baking powder instead of just baking soda.  I also used about a cup of additional flour when patting out the dough.  Then, I grated cold butter with my cheese grater using the largest holes.  I patted out the dough, sprinkled it with half the grated butter and folded the dough over in thirds like a letter.  Then I patted the dough out again and repeated the process.  Finally, I patted the dough out about 1/2 in thick and cut out the biscuits.  It was still a soft dough, but it was quite workable and I was able to cut the biscuits out fairly well with a round cutter.  They were baked at 400 degrees since all the recipes I've ever tried for biscuits use a higher temperature.

The result was a really tasty biscuit.  We ate quite a few with dinner one night with butter and honey.  The rest were eaten by me at breakfast.

They still weren't the towering flaky biscuits we're used to,but they were light and had a really good flavor.  Since we don't need to be gluten free, I'm going to play with them using part wheat flour and see if that gives them some more structure and I'll let you know.

The wheat berries finally sprouted!  My wheat has been sitting sealed in cans for many years so it did not sprout in two days like the directions I've found said they would.  I think you need fresh wheat for that.  It did, however, finally sprout so I dried it out in the dehydrator and will grind it up.  I saw this sourdough pancake recipe that is calling to me to try very soon.  Like tomorrow!

Happily my sourdough did bubble up and become happy and lively.  It wasn't looking too promising there for the first four days.  I'm going to try it in the pancakes and give it another feeding before I try making bread.

marcella