Sunday, March 13, 2011

recipe: spent-grain bread (finally!)

We've been making this bread for a month now, and I can safely say it's the best bread we've made. Also? It makes me want to explore more breads (like, "if we can do this, just think what else we might be able to bake!")

golden delicious

We were lucky to come across a reliable recipe (with great notes) on our first try. It's "Great Bread from Spent Grains" on Brew Your Own.

If you want volume measurements and basic directions/notes for the recipe, see the original. I've converted the volume measurements to weight for our use at home because I find that makes it easier to prep batches. I also like how using weight measurements for everything exposes the ratio behind the recipe ... SCIENCE.

And the notes I've included are just little tidbits of information based on our experience with the bread.

Don't have access to spent grains? The original recipe is built on a simple "pain ordinaire," the directions for which are listed out in great detail.

how we make spent-grain 'pain ordinaire'

ingredients (by weight)

14. g. yeast (we use Fleismanns' rapid rise)
16 oz. water
7 oz. fresh spent grains (wet)
1 lb. 14 oz. flour
18 g. salt

photos & notes {see the gallery on flickr}

I have many bread-making friends, so if any of you see something that I could improve, please share!

spent grains
spent grains
Reserved after the mash, this is the liquid/grain balance that seems to work best so far. We've also used grains that have been drained of as much liquid as possible (no liquid even seemed collected at the bottom of the container we had them in), but the bread baked up more ... cakey? The crumb wasn't as chewy, nor as hole-y.

yeast & water
yeast & water
When Patrick took up the bread-making duties, he started using much warmer water than I had been using, and with good results. With his experience with beer-making (and its reliance on well-tended yeast), he thought the warmer temperatures would bring the yeast to life. He seems to have been right, as our doughs rise more nicely, now.

post-mix, pre-hand-knead
post-mix, pre-hand-knead
The recipe calls for adding most of the bread flour during its initial mix, and kneading in the remaining flour to achieve the desired effect. (On our good bread days, we end up with a soft-to-the-touch, firm, satiny ball.) Here, the dough has just come out of the mixer and we'll generously flour our hands and that mound of dough in addition to what we sprinkled on the counter.

post-knead, pre-rise
post-knead, pre-rise
Satiny, soft and firm. Rounded!

risen!
risen!
This dough's been in the bucket for an hour and a half, covered in a damp rag and near our oven/stove, which had recently been used to make lunch (we usually time the rise with a recently heated oven, to help slightly increase the ambient temperature in our cool-ish apartment). We'll "punch it down" for its secondary rise (about 45 minutes).


dough, dumped
dough, dumped
You can maybe tell just how delicate and soft this dough has become in its first and second rise. We're about to divide it for another rise ...

divided, roughly
dough, divided
We'll drape the dough with the same damp rag we used to blanket the rising container. Then it's time to let the dough rest for 15 minutes.

shaped, pre-rise
shaped, pre-risen
We'll drape this dough *again* with the damp rag, and set it aside for its final rise (about 45 minutes). In the meantime, we preheat our oven to 425F. We allow it -- and a baking stone we keep on the middle rack in the oven -- to heat for the full 45-minute rise. ALSO: On the bottom rack of the oven is a baking sheet that we'll dump ice cubes onto as soon as we set the loaves to bake ... steam trick!

A photo I didn't get: After the rise, just before we set the pan on the baking stone, we score these loaves with a quarter-inch-deep "X."

temperature, achieved
temperature, achieved
The loaves bake between 30 and 40 minutes, but we use a thermometer to decide when to pull them out of the oven. As soon as the middle of the larger loaf (invariably, one of the loaves ends up bigger than the other) reaches 200F, we pull the bread from the oven.

pulled loaves!
pulled loaves
Aren't they beautiful?

thumping for doneness
thumping for doneness
A secondary test we do: the thump. Here, Patrick taps the bottom of a loaf, looking for a "hollow" sound.

golden delicious
golden delicious
We set the loaves to cool for a minimum of ten minutes, which is a truly difficult wait (and minimal; I have a feeling a longer cooling time would be even better to allow the moisture in the loaves to disperse properly as they lose heat).

crust & crumb
crust & crumb
I'm a newbie, but I think those holes are a good sign. I'd love if the crust were shattering, but that's an achievement of experience and we have very little of that.

bread & butter
bread & butter
Best way to enjoy it, if you ask me.


next up ...

We've made beer ice cream using homemade syrup (and that was made using mash liquid, pulled at the same time as these spent grains). I'll get to that in the next couple of weeks.

Excited?! ...

5 comments:

  1. I might have to break down and make this bread this week. Kevin's been pestering me about it since he brewed last weekend but I'm lazy and I hate to hand knead. Maybe I ought to make him do that part...:)

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  2. You should you should! And we do the first knead in our stand mixer. You could probably also finish it out in the stand mixer (when you slowly add the last of the flour). It'd make for a little less cleanup, too.

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  3. It so good! And Meg, you've told me before that you can add X amount of whole grains to breads ... what amount is that? Or maybe a percentage?

    This bread as got me all confident and excited to try more ...

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  4. Looks good!! Spent grain bread is SO yummy!!

    ReplyDelete