I got the start of this recipe from the Beer Advocate website. If you make beer in either Partial Mash or Full grain, I highly suggest this bread to use some of those delicious grains. Also, remember that depending on what you brewed the flavor of the bread is going to vary widely. A bread made from Russian Imperial Stout grains is going to almost be a dessert type bread because of the sugar content of the wort. The bread is going to have a lot of the same characteristics as your wort. Imagine that. 😉
- 12oz beer/some left over wort (any kind will do)
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 3/4 cup dry milk
- 1 1/2 cups spent grain
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 5 cups flour
In a large bowl make a sponge from the beer/wort, grains, sugar, yeast and milk. Cover lightly and let sit for an hour or so. You’ll know it’s ready when it looks spongy. 🙂
Mix in the eggs and salt.
Add about 3 – 4 cups of flour. (With all the liquids this dough is pretty sticky so don’t be surprised)
Flour a surface and turn your dough ball out onto it. Wash your hands, flour ’em and dig in. You’re gonna have sticky dough on your hands while you knead more flour in. You’ll need to knead (heh!) the dough for somewhere around 10 minutes. This gives you time to work the flour in and start those glutens a breakin’ and rebonding.
If you’ve never kneaded before; flour your hands, using the heel of your hand push firmly down and away from yourself on the dough, fold it over and give it a quarter turn and repeat. I tend to use both hands and a fair amount of body weight behind my kneading.
The dough should end smooth and springy.
Note: If you don’t feel like kneading you can just skip that part, but I guarantee you’ll end up with a VERY dense bread. It will still come out and be edible though.
Let the dough rise. I usually wait for it to double in size, but an hour to 90 minutes should do the trick.
Now is where you make a decision. You can make free form loaves or you can make buns or what ever you feel like. It is just dough after all. (I like making hamburger buns and mini-loaves that I can share.)
Ok so we’ve got the dough, lets bake!
Put your prefered dough shape and containment unit in a cold oven and get it going to 400°F. Let things bake at that temperature for about 15 minutes. Then turn it down to 350°F and continue baking for 20 – 30 minutes. (I use stoneware which tends to extend bake time and an over that takes a fortnight to preheat, so I usually go about 20 minutes at 400°F)
Once the bread is baked to your satisfaction, remove it from the oven and put the containment unit on a cooling rack. If you can get your bread out of the containment unit now to cool that’s the best, but if not remove it as soon as you can or you may end up with a bit of sogginess.
That’s it! Happy nomming!