Soakers Explained | How to use a Soaker in Breadmaking

A soaker can be a mix of grains and seeds or a single variety of grain or seed that is mixed with water and left to soak for several hours before being added to bread dough.

It is a great method for adding whole grains and seeds to your bread making it more nutritious and tasty. Besides just nutritional value and flavour, it also helps the bread retain more water and stay fresh for longer.
Soakers can be made with pretty much any seed or grain you could imagine. Anything that can be used in cooking can easily be added to bread dough.

The main reason for soaking grains and seeds is to make them palatable. Imagine biting down on a piece of barley. It would most likely break your tooth. Another important reason for soaking is to prevent the seeds and grains from stealing water from the dough and drying it out in the process. I’m sure we have all one time, or another added a bunch of seeds to a recipe just find that the dough became stiff and dry.

There are two types of soakers – cold and hot.

A cold soaker is made with cold or ambient temperature water. This kind of soaker usually consists of softer grains like oats and cornmeal, and seeds. Such grains and seeds do not require much, or any cooking and they do not take a long time to soak either. Cold soakers can be made in as little as 30 minutes, but they can be left to soak for several hours.

A hot soaker is made with hot or boiling water. This kind of soaker usually consists of hard whole or cracked grains like barley, wheat, millet, buckwheat etc. These kinds of grains can take several hours to soften and hydrate properly.

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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:54 Cold soakers
3:25 Hot soakers
4:24 After soaking
5:09 The recipe
10:27 The result
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