Homemade Breakfast Cereal

HB here. I love cereal. My kids love cereal. But, I cannot bring myself to buy it mostly because the extrusion process involved in making cereal basically causes the cereal to be toxic. If I want something toxic, I'll eat fast food.  I'd rather not waste my toxins on cereal.  I found a recipe for soaked whole wheat cereal at thehealthyhomeeconomist.com and decided to give it a shot. There are two videos posted that explain the process of soaking and then preparing the cereal. Part one here, part two and full written recipe here. I watched the videos and made the cereal. It's super simple. Really.

My tips when making this cereal:

• I soaked soft white wheat flour in buttermilk. Buttermilk is, by far, my favorite soaking medium. Such good flavor. I let them sit for about 6ish hours. It's best to soak grains longer, but I was pressed for time and concerned that our power would go out due to crazay Arkansas weather.
• I crumbled the cake into pieces about the size of a nickel. There were also plenty of extra crumbs that were really small. I tried to avoid leaving any huge pieces, while at the same time, avoiding grinding the crumbs into powder. (The cakes themselves are delish and would be a great breakfast treat!) 
• I put the crumbs in two bar pans and baked at 200 for about 3 hours, turned the oven off, went to bed and then turned the oven back on for about 5 more hours. I stirred the crumbs every 2 hours or so.

Here you can see the size and texture of the finished cereal. Not the best presentation, but tastes very yummy. 

The cereal itself tastes a lot like grape nuts, but has a better, less-grainy, flavor. And, the cereal is not nearly as hard on my teeth as grape nuts. My dentist told me that hard cereals, like granola and grape nuts, can cause tooth breakage and chipping. We added raisins and milk to ours and loved it. My older kiddos (pictured below) say they prefer this cereal to granola. Yay for a new, simple, nourishing recipe! Thanks to Sarah at the healthyhomeeconomist.com for this great recipe!