I recieved a comment from someone about the very real chance that my wheat berry sprouts are in fact drowned and not sprouted. This greatly concerned me so I decided to do a test on the sprouts. The gentlemen informed me that most of my berries would be drowned and not sprouted and described breifly a test called the Falling Numbers Test. He is an excerpt of his comment posted here: "...of utmost importance, they (essentialeating.com) conduct the falling number test to determine that the grain has been sprouted and not drown...all steps that cannot be done in a home operation. Based on convention wisdom about how to sprout grains, most of the grain is being drown and not sprouted. Now that I know, I use Essential Eating sprouted flours exclusively for all the reasons you mention plus it is the most safe, sanitary and consistent sprouted flour with amazing baking characteristics available."
In the photo above are the results of my sprouting test. I am conducting my sprouting test on Prarie Gold, hard white spring wheat, which I purchased directly from Wheat Montana. This picture was taken 24 hours of sprouting. I soaked the berries first for 10 hours. Upon examination, I could not find any berries that had not sprouted.
I went to the website for the Canadian Grain Commission where I found a photos and descriptions of sprout damage. I closely examined 10 my unsprouted berries and compared them to the photos on the site. I found no damaged.
I feel confident, as a result of my testing, that my wheat berries are indeed sprouting and are not drowned.
follow up: I posted my question about drowned vrs. sprouted wheat berries on The Fresh Loaf website: Are My Sprouts DROWNED or sprouted? Here is an exerpt from the first response to my post: "People have been sprouting grains at home with great success much longer than your comment maker has been alive. Your sprouted grains look perfect to me".
I think this put the issue to rest.
