Sprouted Buckwheat
So I recently bought some Kaia Buckwheat Crunchies Raw Granola. It’s really tasty. It’s also really expensive. So I determined to make it myself. I figure it costs a lot because of the effort that goes into sprouting the buckwheat, but that turns out to be reasonably easy. It takes about 3 days, but your overall time spent on it will be only about 30-45 minutes.
Get some raw organic buckwheat in bulk at your health food store (it’s cheap!) and soak it for a few hours in water (I use filtered or distilled). Drain well and rinse, rinse, rinse. I have a lovely big strainer I use for rinsing/sprouting, the kind with the little legs and nice handles so I can just dump the soaked buckwheat in this strainer and rinse and then sprout all in the same container. You can also use a special sprouting jar if you have one.
After rinsing well, set in a dark corner of your kitchen and cover with a towel. If you can, rinse every four hours (during the day) for a couple of days. It’s fine though if you go to work and can’t rinse that often, just make sure you rinse 3 times a day. After 1.5 - 2 days you should see sprouts. Do a final rinse, and then transfer the sprouts to a baking sheet (like you’d use for cookies), and spread out. Place in the oven at 120F if your oven will go that low. Mine won’t; the min temperature is 170F, so I use that and open the oven just a bit by putting a wooden spoon in the door. It will take 8-10 hours to dry the buckwheat, so do it during the day when you’re home (I don’t think it’s safe to leave the oven on all day when you’re not there). Once it seems dry, turn off the oven and let it sit there for another hour or two to cool completely.
To make the granola, I combine with chopped nuts and a little dried fruit. Kaia granola has agave as a sweetener; I find I don’t really need that, so I don’t add any sweetener to mine. I have it with almond milk and fresh fruit in the morning for breakfast. Yum!
