Spent Grain Bread

Happiness is a warm grain bed!  It pains me to part with the heavenly remains of a brewing session, but until now I haven't come up with anything more useful than composting for my hop garden.

This year I have experimented a bit in recycling brewing byproducts into bread.  My first attempt to salvage yeast from the bottom of my fermentor to make yeast rolls was a miserable failure.  I had left hop leaves in my fermenter and the hoppy flavor did not do much for the rolls.  On top of that, I was too impatient and didn't allow my yeast to get a good enough start.  The net result was chewy, bitter bread pucks that my family will not forget soon enough.

This week I decided to try and use some of my spent grains from the "Fermentation Friday Ale" to make a whole grain bread.  A baker I am not, but with a little tweaking I think I may be on to something good here...

I took about three cups of spent grain and mixed it with a cup of warm water, cup of flour, and a package of dry yeast.  I put this in my oven for most of the day with the light on to get a starter going.  later that evening I mixed in more water (3 cups) and flour (5+cups) until I got a suitable ball of dough (I think I better watch a cooking show to figure out the proper technique because I made a big mess).  Then I let that ball rise to over twice its size (couple of hours while we made some ABT's), fashioned a couple of primitive loaves and stuck them in the oven at 450° for about 30min.

They are nice and crusty on the outside like sourdough and hearty on the inside.  This bread would go great with soup.  Quite tasty if I do say so myself, and our 16 month old was begging for more

Things I might try next time:

• Try with a batch of more interesting specialty grains
• Fashion more attractive loaves and let them rise in their shape before placing in the oven
• Try using beer yeast and/or add a little beer to the mix.

Happy Baking!

D

Comments

[Sarah]

Thanks for posting this! I am getting ready to experiment with using the grains my husband just used for a batch of beer, and I have always been interested in getting more texture into my breads, so this looks like it will do the trick. Your bread looks great.