Soaking Wheat Berries for Bread
from Sylvia beadlizard, 1/3/02:
Ann, I usually just use my usual recipe and soak the wheat berries overnight first. You can sprout them slightly, just where they are starting to send out a tiny explorer, to make them more tender and shift the flavor. If you don't soak them first, they will break your teeth! In Laurel's Bread Book, she recommends soaking red wheat berries two or three days. "Knead them, about half a cupful per loaf, into any bouncy plain bread dough." Ranked second (in her opinion and mine) are unsprouted whole berries, boiled until chewy and kneaded into the dough.
From her recipe for Vollkornbrot:
Rinse [1 pound] wheat berries in warm water. Bring 2 3/4 cups water to a boil. Turn off the heat, add the wheat berries, and let them sit overnight. By morning the berries should have burst open; if they don't, bring them to a boil again and cook until they burst. Let them cool to a warm room temperature.
I usually just rinse them and sprout them as I would alfalfa seeds, but with a bit more patience and just enough for the grains to open, not for them to send out a full sprout.