Sprouted Whole Wheat

We're excited to have you try our newest variety of bread! We hope you enjoy it.

Here's what we love about this variety.

** The wheat is grown just down the road **

The wheat in this bread is grown by Cascade Organic Farms in Royal City, Washington. If you've ever been to a concert at The Gorge Amphitheater, you've been very close to the fields where this wheat is grown.

Justin Brown and his team cultivate their crops in soil that perfect's for growing wheat. Justin’s a 3rd-generation farmer and he’s passionate about organic farming practices. We hope to be able to interview him someday soon. When we do, we'll let you know. In the meantime, here’s our best effort at telling all the reasons we love this wheat.

** The wheat is grown using organic farming methods **

Rather than relying on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, Cascade uses organic methods to enrich the soil and control pests. They undergo several audits every years in order to maintain their organic certification. If you're curious why we don't market this more than we do, it has to do with the certification process. You can read more about all of this toward the end of this page.

** Cascade uses their own well water **

Most of the wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest is entirely dependent on rainfall each season. This means the final quality of the crop is determined by the timing and amount of rain the fields received. Cascade does things a little different. They irrigate their circle crops using water from their own wells. By doing so, they have control over the quality and consistency of their harvest. It also assures there's no contamination from neighboring farms who don't employ the same organic growing practices.

** Cascade mills their own grain **

They produce their flour using their single-pass, high-impact mill. All wheat that goes in comes out as finely-milled, 100% whole wheat flour.

Cascade sprouts their wheat in the field just before harvest

There's so much to learn about this process. It's widely accepted, though, that the process of sprouting wheat just prior to milling has many healthy benefits.

We not only want to bake fresh bread, we also want to make bread that’s unique, healthy, and full of nutritious ingredients. This is why we’re really excited about this wheat.

Here’s why it’s believed it’s so nutritious.

First of all, it’s important to recognize the value and role of the seed.

All species, including plants, are equipped with built-in defense mechanisms to ensure the survival of future generations. In the case of grains, seeds propagate future generations and the survival of these seeds is achieved through a combination of their hard-coated shell and an arsenal of biochemical defenses.

Seeds are inherently nutrient-dense so that, at the end of each wheat-growing season, the seeds have all of the nutrients they need to be ready to sprout as early as the growing conditions permit.

Unfortunately, because these seeds are so packed-full of the nutrients we thrive on, they are also highly sought after by insects and fungi. That’s where the seed’s defenses come into play. In addition to nutrients, the seed contains anti-nutrients to protect itself from these predators. Anti-nutrients, like phytic acid, are compounds that bind together zinc, iron, and other minerals that insects and fungi might want, making them inaccessible. Likewise, the seed contains anti-protease-inhibiting factors that prevent the breakdown of the seed contents by these foreign invaders.

For additional survival assurance, plants also create storage proteins (as opposed to freely-available proteins) that allow the seed’s protein reserves to be preserved through the harsh elements of winter so that when seasonal weather conditions are ideal in the spring, the seed can sprout.

While the hard seed coatings, anti-nutrients, and storage proteins ensure the survival of the seed by making it inedible to insects and fungi… it is for these very reasons that grains can be problematic for humans when digested.

It turns out, however, that unlocking the full nutritional potential of grains is possible.The secret comes from a late-season sprouting technique employed by Justin Brown and his team at Cascade Flour.

When the growing season is drawing to a close, when the crop is dry and the grain is ready for storage, Cascade draws the water from their wells and sprinkles their fields. This mimics early Spring-like conditions, watering the dry grains and prompting seeds to start sprouting again.

So what does this late-season sprouting do? It immediately jumpstarts the seed’s process of digesting energy from the soil, unlocking protein reserves and breaking them down into beneficial peptides and amino acids such as lysine and tryptophan. The sprouting also causes the plant to break down its own starches in order to fuel the germination of the seed. In addition, the hard coating of the seed softens during the sprouting process.

All of these changes remove the anti-nutrients and anti-protease inhibitors that would normally inhibit the bioavailability of key nutrients we thrive on. With this, the vitamin B, vitamin A, vitamin D content, amino acids, and other minerals such as zinc and iron are more readily available and in greater quantities in the breads they are used to make.

It’s worth noting that this sprouting process would be much more difficult in grains that have been treated with chemicals either in the field or in storage. While chemical treatments inhibit the grain from being devoured by insects or fungi, they also inhibit the seeds from sprouting. As a result, organically grown or non-treated crops will always be the best candidates for unlocking the true nutritional potential of spouted grains.

So as you enjoy BreadBot’s sprouted grain bread varieties made with Cascade’s organic crop, you can now enjoy with the accompanying knowledge of how and why it’s so nutritious.

So, is it “Organic”?

After reading the ingredients label on the back of the Sprouted Wheat bag, people will often ask, “So, is this bread organic?” It’s a straightforward question deserving of a straightforward answer. Unfortunately, the question cannot be adequately answered with a simple “yes” or “no”.

To be able to market a product as USDA organic, in addition to the ingredients, the entire process—all the way from seed to when your loaf is put in a bag—must comply with organic standards. This means that every ingredient and every process in between, including the baking and packaging methods, must also be certified organic.

Giving you a peek into the growth, production, and packaging of BreadBot’s Sprouted Wheat variety might be the best way to explain the unique challenges we’re facing if we want to certify our breads as “organic.”

Cascade Organic Flour grows their wheat using certified-organic farming practices and pest control management. In order to retain their certified-organic status, various certifying inspectors audit this process several times per year to ensure their farming methods adhere to the organic standards.

Cascade doesn’t use synthetic pesticides or herbicides. Additionally, they irrigate their fields with their own well water to ensure the water supply isn't contaminated by nearby farms that might be using synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, etc.

After harvest, most farms sell their wheat to a regional grain elevator where it's then mixed with wheat from other farms and eventually sold to a mill to be grounded into flour. Breaking from this norm, Cascade Flour mills their own wheat in Royal City, WA. By processing their own wheat in their own mill, Cascade can officially certify their flour as organic.

Once the milling process is complete, Cascade Flour transports 50-lb. bags of their sprouted whole wheat flour to an ADM mix plant in Spokane, WA. Although the facility has been certified to process organic ingredients, most of the flour that’s mixed in this facility is commodity flour. To run organic flour through their production line requires an extensive (and expensive) cleaning with each transition between processing non-organic ingredients to organic ingredients. This is why the plant does very little organic processing. They’re simply not set up to do it efficiently and to do so would translate to a heavy expense for the customer.

Hypothetically, though, if we decided to purchase only certified-organic ingredients for all bread varieties and we paid the Spokane mix facility to transition their line to certified organic standards for every production run of our mixes, the loaves baked in the BreadBot still couldn’t be marketed as organic!

Here’s why. This is an explanation from QAI, one of the organic-certifying agencies:

“If a retailer (grocery store) wants to market a product as certified-organic, the retail operations themselves would need to get certified as they are further processing* the product.

*Processing. Cooking, baking, curing, heating, drying, mixing, grinding, churning, separating, extracting, slaughtering, cutting, fermenting, distilling, eviscerating, preserving, dehydrating, freezing, chilling, or otherwise manufacturing and includes the packaging, canning, jarring, or otherwise enclosing food in a container.

Because the bread is made and packed at their (grocery store) bakery, the store would be considered a processor. In that case they need to be certified in order to sell products as organic or 100% organic, unless other exemptions apply.”

So that’s the bottom line. Because the final steps of the process—specifically the baking, slicing, and packaging—take place in grocery stores, it depends on each store’s ability and willingness to become certified as an organic processor.

As you can see, our ability to provide a simple “yes” or “no” answer to the organic question is somewhat limited by the complexities behind organic certification.

We’re curious, what do you think of the BreadBot?