Bread.

is it worth trying to use beer yeast in bread as opposed to bakers yeast? would it impart any beery flavours? or are they just too different?

Look up the barm cake on the Wiki.

We had sourdough rolls for dinner last night with the addition of flaked wheat from my latest hefe. mmmmmmmmmmmm good!

Awww, sheeeeeeeeee(iiii)t! I can't even tell you guys how stoked I am about this! I haven't been so pumped since I discovered homebrewing. I drove EVERYWHERE looking for a baguette pan...to no avail. So, what do we do when we can't find/afford something? We make it!!!! I made a ghetto baguette pan (pics to follow, so I can show you the finished bread and all) and plan to use it on Thxgiving.:rockin: (FWIW, I'll prolly still get a pan online )

Im pretty sure this thread has inspired me to start baking bread.

I was a cook and assistant pitmaster for years, but I never dabbled in the world of baking.

Good work guys!

damn you orfy , There is only one thing i like better than beer and that is Bread.
<<< First homemade bread is in the oven.

Bread turned out great.
one pound wheat flour
5 ounces skim milk
2 tablespoons Flax seed
about 1/4 cup honey
12 ounces water or until the right consistency.

ScubaSteve said:

I haven't been so pumped since I discovered homebrewing. I drove EVERYWHERE looking for a baguette pan...to no avail.

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Aww man, I could have saved you some time and effort (assuming you have a stone or two). You actually don't need the pan, but what you do need is a Couche. To make one at home, all you do is rub flour into a lint free towel. Like tons of it. Then you lay that down on the counter. Now you can just use the backsplash of your counter as the far 'side' of the Couche. You start with the end of the towel 'up' the backsplash, and lay down your first loaf. Then you pinch up the towel so that it comes up the side of the loaf. The other side of the 'pinch' is the seperation between the next loaf. Repeat until you run out of towels and then just set a board at least the length of the loaf on the outside edge, parallel to the backsplash.

When the loaves have doubled, you have your oven really hot, especially the stone. You take a Peel ( a simple thin smooth board heavily floured works fine, or an open sided sheet pan) and rest it next to the loaf, and then gently roll the loaf onto it. Make a few long almost vertical slashes with a double edged razor blade (go deep, almost 1/2") and gently slide it onto the stone.

Actually the idea of using heavily floured towels in contact with the dough was a leap of faith for me at first. When I first used this method, I thought for sure that it would stick, but it works great. I rise my Peasant loaves in wicker baskets lined with towels.

I made the pain l'ancienne and foccacia bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.... unfortunately I ate both of them before I thought to take any pictures!

But I will say that I absolutely love the book... and I'll probably be cranking out another recipe this weekend. For now at least, bread baking has replace homebrewing for me... similar hobbies but a quicker payoff for my ADD personality

It's got to be the yeast/fermentation connection... Like many others, I am very interested in this now, thanks Orfy for the idea.

Baked a loaf 2 nights ago, from the recipe in 'lesson 2' on thefreshloaf.com - it was pretty simple, and has been great for sandwiches. Can't wait to try some fancier breads.

beenjammin said:

is it worth trying to use beer yeast in bread as opposed to bakers yeast? would it impart any beery flavours? or are they just too different?

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yeah u can do it they did it on one of the basic brewing pod casts, said it tasted like bread, and the beer made with bakers yeast tasted like beer.

You can make bread with beer just mix beer with flour, salt, sugar and baking powder and bake, there's quite a few recipes for this via google, apparently different types of beer impart different flavors, only ever had it made with budweiser myself.

BigNick73 said:

yeah u can do it they did it on one of the basic brewing pod casts, said it tasted like bread, and the beer made with bakers yeast tasted like beer.

You can make bread with beer just mix beer with flour, salt, sugar and baking powder and bake, there's quite a few recipes for this via google, apparently different types of beer impart different flavors, only ever had it made with budweiser myself.

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tried it a few days ago...theres probably a simpler and faster way to do than i did but here's what i did anyways.

I put about half of my 675 ml bottle of an extremely malty brown ale, with the yeast slurry, in a bowl with a bit of sugar and white flour. i let it sit overnight to wake up and get active (probably wasn't necessary). the next morning it was bubbling nicely so i made the dough with 2 cups whole wheat and one cup unbleached white flower, with a bit of salt and lots of rosemary. it took the better part of the day and an entire night to complete two risings so the morning of the 3rd day i molded it and baked around 350...it probably wasn't necessary but i wanted to see what it would be like without using bakers yeast. (didn't check out the podcasts, but i will now)...it came out very malty, and honestly tasted better than the beer...which was a bit too malty for me...so the process and outcome, imo was definately worth it even if i couldn't condense the time involved.

Here are my thoughts on the subject...

1) I knew somebody was going to try to make a baguette screen! I just knew it! Never actually used it but this looks reasonable:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004R91J/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

2) While not so much for the beginning baker, once you feel you have the hang of it this is one of the finest artisan bread books I have ever seen :
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679409076/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

3) No one has discussed the building of a starter! Also, for those of you who are serious brewers, I don't recommend using anything but beer yeast. You don't really want a bunch of rogue yeasties proliferating in your kitchen like those little guys in the Good Eats beer episode. A starter is not terribly hard to maintain (if you can culture yeast from your beer chances are your 4 year old can make and maintain a starter) and lend so much character to your bread. This is how your bread can truly become yours....and stay that way. I know people who have starters that are literally older than I am. Some bakers keep them for 20 years.

Glad to see this post, nice to see PseudoChef isn't really so "Pseudo":rockin:

TerapinChef said:

Here are my thoughts on the subject...

1) I knew somebody was going to try to make a baguette screen! I just knew it! Never actually used it but this looks reasonable:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004R91J/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

2) While not so much for the beginning baker, once you feel you have the hang of it this is one of the finest artisan bread books I have ever seen :
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679409076/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

3) No one has discussed the building of a starter! Also, for those of you who are serious brewers, I don't recommend using anything but beer yeast. You don't really want a bunch of rogue yeasties proliferating in your kitchen like those little guys in the Good Eats beer episode. A starter is not terribly hard to maintain (if you can culture yeast from your beer chances are your 4 year old can make and maintain a starter) and lend so much character to your bread. This is how your bread can truly become yours....and stay that way. I know people who have starters that are literally older than I am. Some bakers keep them for 20 years.

Glad to see this post, nice to see PseudoChef isn't really so "Pseudo":rockin:

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Haha, thanks.

I have tried to make a starter multiple times with various methods, but it just seems to me Nashville doesn't have delicious wild-yeasties. I can do one that tastes like sourdough, but doesn't have leavening power, and one that tastes like poop and leavens. Go figure. I know I could just add regular yeast to the good one, but I wanted to do it all with wild.

Once I get off my arse, I'm gonna try again with Reinhart's raisin method. Hopefully that will work out.

I'm entirely speculating on this topic, but I"m pretty sure that if you get your starter going with a known yeast strain, it should take over quickly enough that any other yeasts that get into it would lend marginal flavors at best, as long as you keep your starter well fed and fairly active (using and replenishing it at least twice a week should be sufficient if I remember my 5 am bread baking class...)

For those of you with a busy work / home life that can't always plan ahead, here is a recipe for quick yeast bread I got out of the local supermarket quarterly recipe flyer. Works good, although not quite as good texture as double risen or starter based bread. However, I can get home from work and have hot fresh bread on the table about 1.5-2 hours later. Using Kitchen Aid stand mixer with bread hood makes it almost effortless.
Preheat oven to 250*F
1.25 c warm water
1 Tbsp. instant yeast
1 tsp. salt
1-2 Tbsb honey, sugar, molasses or whatever sugar substance you like
2.5-3 cups flour (I usually use 1 to 1.5 cups whole wheat or rye)

Briefly mix until combine, let rest 5-10 minutes. Knead for 5-10 minutes.
Turn off oven. Shape dough into loaf. Pour a little oil in loaf pan, put in bread and turn to coat. Place in oven.

Let rise until doubled 20-30 min.
Turn on oven to 400*F, cook 15 minutes
Reduce oven to 350*F, cook 20-30 minutes until done

This is good for adding other stuff. I have used various additions including some leftover mashed sweet potatos, oat bran, bulghur (cracked wheat) rehydrated in water in microwave for few min, quick oats. Spent grain would be great. Don't use more that 50% whole wheat, or it takes longer to rise and stays real dense - guess that takes the traditional baking methods.

So has landhoney tried a soured bread yet?

could be interesting...

Orfy, if you like heartier breads consider making some spent grain bread (Link is to one recipe on this site, there are others.) I only made this once -- I actually think it may have been with grains from your Mild Mannered Ale -- and it was quite delicious.

Check out my Neighbor's website - Eric is SERIOUS about bread and a heck of a good neighbor too ...

http://www.breadtopia.com/

Man do I love my Neighborhood


Jens

WOW that's one cool web page. Boy i like your neighbors!

I have Chad's recipe from back on page three in this thread in the oven. It smells pretty darn good, but this has been a high maintenance queen of a recipe.

FYI: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/422541-post22.html

If you kinda like sourdough, but don't care for the really funky stuff, I have a mixed yeast/ sourdough I have made before and will make again.

1T yeast
3T wheat germ, optional
3T sugar, I have used DME
1T salt
4 cups flour
1.5 cups active sourdough starter
3T butter
1 cup milk
cornmeal sprinkles in greased pans

Mix. Knead. Rise. Punch. Loaf. Proof. Bake at 300-ish until brown on top.

I get my sourdough starter out of the fridge 12-24 hours before I cook with it. If 24 hours I'll feed it immediately before I draw active starter back off it tomorrow.

EDIT: I got the high maintenance queen out of the oven. I used bread flour instead of whole wheat, my sourdough lives on General Purpose. I used DME instead of brown sugar. I used the IPA I have on tap instead of milk or water or whatever for liquid. I used spent grains that had a couple ounces of fuggles added in the mash tun (oops). Overall I like it and will play with it some more. I waited until it was cool enough to not melt butter, but I bet the bread will get better. There is just something wrong with a bread that can't be served fresh from the oven hot enough to melt butter.

EDIT II: Fourteen hours out of the oven and I have to say the two part overnight recipe was worth the trouble. I am sure all those steps will become less onerous on future batches. Homemade bread tastes more like bread than that store boguht stuff, but this, oh man, good stuff.

EDITIII: I am on my third time through now. The second time I didn't have any hops in my grains but I hit the never ending miracle keg of IPA for the soaker liquid again. This time I used plain water, grains is 2# spent Marris Otter with 0.5# Crystal 40 in it. This is worth learning to do, the third time through now I am feeling pretty nonchalant. I have a black stout coming up this weekend...

My take two on Chad's recipe from page 3. Really good stuff. My mash bill was 2.0# MO and 0.5# Crystal 60. Luvin it.

My wife and mother in law are gonna be so happy. I never thought about the spent grains. The chickens aren't gonna be happy but I'll just pet them and they will be fine. Authentic San Francisco sourdough starter in the fridge and all of these recipes? I have work to do after brewing. This thread has inspired me. Thanks guys.

Orfy,
You Suck! But only in a good way. When I first really got into brewing years ago, my then SWMBO would make dark bread from scratch and me and my neighbor/brew partner would eat Gouda cheese, dark bread and drink German dark home brew until we could not remember our given names. After seeing the photos of your breads, I will start trying to bake. Great, one more thing to put weight on me! - Dwain

Chad, I am doing something wrong, or at elast different. When i put my final dough together I am using 1.5 to 2.0 sups flour easy to get tosomething manageable.

I have been using active sourdough by weight as my biga. My active starter is 50-50 by volume flour and water. Are you maybe pouring the liquor off the active sourdough and using just the pasty goop?

My bread is coming out great, I am just using way more than 5-7 tablespoonsof flour.

Thanks for the great recipe.

Orfy,
Made the rosemary bread from your recipe this evening. This new hobby is going to be baaaad. Turned out really good. Here's a couple of photos. Thanks - Dwain

I had a happy accident. I ahve two variables to figure out, but the experiment is under way.

Last w/e I made a export stout, and I blew my mashout. In stead of mashing out with 180° water all I had ready was more 155°F, so I used that.

Then I made my soaker. Left it on the counter overnight. My pager went off around 0500 the next morning, so I stuck the soaker ball in the fridge on my way out the door. I figured I would get to it in "a day or two," it ended up sitting in the fridge four days.

I was prepared to pitch it in the trash when I pulled it out of the fridge last night. But it smells OK, and when I poked at it it smelled kinda sweet. I pulled at it some, it was very stringy, still smelled good, and tasted awesome. What the heck.

So I took a loaf in to work this morning. This fourth batch garnered more and better compliments in 15 minutes than the first three batches collected lifetime. I dunno what I did "wrong," but I found a keeper.

Yesterday I made a pale ale and I got the mashout temp correct. I got two soaker balls going out of that spent grain, one I left out overnight last night that went in the fridge when I came home on my luch break to make another soaker, and the second that I came home to make because the comments were so positive.

One I will bake tommorrow to check the baseline against the usual recipe, I am going to let the other soaker go a few days to see if it gets all stringy.

Skinny girls who are religous about carbs were telling me I should sell this at the Farmer's Market. Seriously. Six bucks a loaf. The big people were making nom-nom-nom noises.

FWIW I used water instead of beer in the soaker ball the last two batches, and I used granulated sugar in the final dough the fourth time through.

I am also going to PM Chad, he knows tons more about bread than I do.

I didn't realize there was a whole thread about bread baking. I've been baking all my own bread for a couple of years now. It tastes so much better and gives me a chance to experiment with new things, which I love to do. I have made spent grain bread a few times but find that the volume of spent grains I produce from brewing far outweighs the amount of bread the wife and I can reasonably consume with said grain. Even when I bake bread and make a double batch of dog biscuits to go along with it, I still end up with tons of leftover grain. I wish I could compost the rest, but I live in a small apartment.

Anyway, it's nice to see this thread going and I'll maybe try to take some photos the next time I bake something.

Wow. From the two soaker ball pale ale batch above I left one soaker ball out at room temp until it got stringy and I got a seriously sour batch of bread out of it. I took it in to work and it evaporated.

Right now I have the second soaker ball proofing. This one stayed in the fridge until stringy and it is very sweet instead of very sour. I had three co workers ask me to bring in bread tommorrow even though it is my day off. Two of them apologized first, having checked the schedule before they made their requests. I'll be editing in about two hours it looks like, I need to get some butter out of the fridge to soften... and it will be a Roggen this weekend, just for the grains. And the halibut.

EDIT: OMGWTFBBQ!! Mash out as usual, put the soaker ball in the fridge for a few days, I never thought of bread as a panty peeling type product before. Zounds!!

I have another variation going. Instead of water this time (I am up to quadruple batches) I used my last runnings out of the mash tun for the liquid in the soaker ball. I mashed out at 155F, so there should be a little enzyme activity still going on.

I am going to split this shortly, half to the fridge for three or four days (until stringy) and half on the counter top at room temp to stringy. Gotta go feed my sourdough.

Medium Crystal, Dom 2-Row, Chocolate. Tas-tee.

javedian said:

For those of you with a busy work / home life that can't always plan ahead, here is a recipe for quick yeast bread I got out of the local supermarket quarterly recipe flyer. Works good, although not quite as good texture as double risen or starter based bread. However, I can get home from work and have hot fresh bread on the table about 1.5-2 hours later. Using Kitchen Aid stand mixer with bread hood makes it almost effortless.

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Made a starter and modified a few things, but damn! :rockin:

I am going to make.

Ingredients

* 650 g white bread flour
* 2x 7g yeast sachets
* 50 ml cold water
* 100 ml hot water
* 1 tsp salt
* 1tsp Sugar

Method

* Weigh out the flour and put into a large bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt and mix.

In a jug put in sugar and dissolve in the hot water, then add the remaining water and yeast sachets and whisk. Leave somewhere warm until you have 2cm of froth on top. Whisk again and then pour into flour mix. Mis together adding enough warm water to form a dough. Knead for 10 minutes, then leave under a clean cloth for 15 mins to prove. Place into a loaf tin and place in the oven around 180 degrees for 45-50 mins or until it sounds hollow.

Subcribed. There are some excellent looking loaves here!

I suggest anyone interested in baking good bread to read the Tartine bread book. Really.

StMarcos said:

I suggest anyone interested in baking good bread to read the Tartine bread book. Really.

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I have that book, and yes, it's a good one.

Made some baguettes today. I tried a different technique for steam in the oven which seemed to work a bit better than previously. The crust is much crunchier than the last time I made them.