How to Soak Grains and Why You Should

Have you heard about soaking grains to make them easier to digest and more nutritious? Here’s some information about how to soak grains, why you should, and how to make your favorite recipes more nutritious by adding soaking the grains to the process!

It’s pretty interesting stuff. Put on your thinking cap and let’s get started.

The road to healthy eating sure is a long one.  One step at a time.  There is so much information and always something new to learn.

Take me, for example.  I thought I was a healthy eater when

• I stopped eating meat and ate an extremely low fat diet. 
• I switched from processed foods to whole wheat flour and less refined sweeteners. 
• I started grinding my own grain.

In any case, somewhere along the line I heard about the importance of soaking grains.

Making the Grains In Your Diet Healthier

Here are some tips for how to make healthier choices about the grains in your diet.

• Stop eating (or at least greatly reduce) refined flours that are devoid of all nutrients. That means no white flour, and even being careful about starches like tapioca flour (for those of you on gluten-free diets) as these can be hard on your digestive system.
• Start grinding your own grain.
• Eat less gluten.Eat less grain (us westerners, in particular, need to cut back)
• Buy organic, or at least ‘certified chemical free’ (CCF) grains, whenever possible.

and then there’s the topic of this post: soaking grains.

Why You Should Soak Grains

When you think about it, grains are seeds. You plant them in the ground and they sprout into plants. Other types of seeds that we eat are seeds, nuts, and grains. 

All of these have protective coatings that need to be removed for the seeds to germinate. Of course we remove the shells of the nuts and seeds before eating them, but there is also a coating on whole grains that prevents them from being digested properly.

In my post about how to soak nuts and seeds I addressed that food group, and in how to de-gas beans, I talked about making beans more digestible. Well, now it’s time to work on the grains.

Soaking grains neutralizes enzyme inhibitors in the brain to make grains easier to digest. (source) So much easier, in fact, that some people find they don’t have a problem (or as much of a problem) with gluten-containing foods when they soak their gluten-containing grains first. 

Soaked grain recipes definitely have a lighter texture and seem to be easier on our digestive systems so it is definitely worth it for us.

The Need for Phytase When Soaking Grains

Soaking grains using the above method works fine for grains that are high in phytase (buckwheat, wheat, or rye), but for grains that are low in phytase (oats, rice, millet, corn, etc.) you need to add a high-phytase grain to the low-phytase grain in order to have the soaking be beneficial (source).

It appears that substituting approximately 10% of the low-phytase grain / flour with a high-phytase grain source is sufficient (source). For example, if you are making a cake that calls for 3 cups of flour, then you would remove approximately 1/3 of a cup of the flour and replace it with wheat or rye, or you can use buckwheat as an option if you are gluten-free.

Oats and Phytates

One other thing to note is that oats are particularly high in phytates so soaking oats is something that I definitely recommend (source). This recipe for Baked Oatmeal is a great one with the soaking built right in to the recipe.

How to Adapt Your Favorite Recipes With Soaking

• Combine grains (either whole or in cut, flaked, or flour form) with liquids, sweeteners and fats.
• Replace 1 tablespoon of your liquid with an acidic medium (vinegar, lemon juice, or whey).  If the liquid is already acidic or cultured, then you can simply skip this step.
• Allow your mixture to sit at room temperature for at least 12 and for up to 24 hours.  When I am rushed, 7 hours works for me 🙂
• Add the remaining ingredients for your recipe and proceed as close as possible to the original instructions.

With some recipes that have a more stiff dough (like pie crust, bars, or these delicious whole grain doughnuts), the dough will definitely be hard to mix at this point. 

However, if you’re willing to put in a little elbow grease and make sure that all of the ingredients get mixed in well, you can use this soaking technique for any grain-based recipe to make the food more digestible.

How about you? 
Did you know about why you should soak grains or do you already do it?