Festive Harvest Wheat Sheaf for Fall

This Harvest Wheat Sheaf recipe makes a festive loaf to display on your Fall table. Made with a portion of sprouted wheat berries, it’s an edible and fun Fall project.

I’ve really been enjoying Fall this year.  The colors have been so vibrant and beautiful that I’ve just been in awe.  The Harvest Moon was particularly awesome this year and it inspired me to create this festive Harvest Wheat Sheaf. 

This bread is really easy to make, but it does take a few days from start to finish because of the extra time needed to sprout the wheat grains. Don’t let that discourage you. It’s a truly beautiful and festive bread that is worth the extra time.

Did you know that …

“For thousands of years the survival and power of a tribe or country depended on its stocks in grain. Harvesting, processing, and storing grain stocks was of huge importance, and war was declared only after harvest…One of the earliest records of large-scale food preserving was in ancient Egypt, where it was enormously important to create adequate stocks of dried grain to insure against the failure of the Nile to flood seasonally. Huge quantities of grain were stored in sealed silo, where they could be kept for several years if necessary. Records from 2600 B.C. show that the annual flooding of the Nile produced surpluses of grain that were stored and kept to feed builders of irrigation schemes and pyramid tombs. The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza was built around 2900 B.C. by slaves fed with stores of grain and chickpeas, onions, and garlic.”
— Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Processing Changed the World, Sue Shepard [Simon & Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 51)
Source: The Food Timeline http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq3.html

This bread is edible, but I wouldn’t let anybody eat it right away.  I froze it to save for Thanksgiving. It would make a great centerpiece, but my family will probably want to eat it.  Families are like that you know.