Using brewing yeast for bread

[be-rad]

Anyone ever tried it? Any special precautions? Does it alter the flavor any?

Also, I heard from somewhere about bakers taking malted barley and grinding it into flour- Has anyone ever tried that?

The holidays are coming up and I was tying to think of something a little unique to share with the family.

[nathanm]

I researched this a few years ago, and though I can't offer up any links or that sort of stuff of the top of my head, I can tell you I remember people saying that it doesn't work that well, and the flavors aren't good/diff enough to make it something you'd want to do. I'm sure you can search around a few different beer forums and find some discussion.

Also, you can make bread made with beer and regular bread yeast.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beer-bread-i/detail.aspx

[wunderbier]

I haven't used beer yeast in baking or crushed grains either. But I have used malt extract in baking with good results. Pretty much any baked good is going to taste better with some malt. I just made some malty chocolate chip cookies, loosely based on the Wakefield recipe, and they are as moreish as a cookie can be. Briess makes a tasty lineup of malt-centric products. I suppose those would be better used as a flour replacement, though. Extract you can use as a 1:1 replacement for sugar.

[BayouBrew]

I've made bread with left over yeast cake from a stout (WLP002). It worked just fine. The bread rose like normal and came out tasting a little like stout. That was probably due to the little bit of beer in the cake rather than the yeast though.

[calpete]

I've been wanting to get a nice sourdough starter going, and figured I'd do so as soon as I make my next batch of California Common. Would there be any sense, however, to giving the sourness a boost by pitching critters other than Saccharomyces? On a more general note, anyone have a good recipe for Sourdough bread, something that has an authentic San Francisco tang? Because the worst thing about living in L.A. (as opposed to being up by the Bay) is the inability to find decent sourdough at just about any grocery store you walk into. That, and a very thin supply of good Italian delis.

[wunderbier]

I've been wanting to get a nice sourdough starter going, and figured I'd do so as soon as I make my next batch of California Common. Would there be any sense, however, to giving the sourness a boost by pitching critters other than Saccharomyces? On a more general note, anyone have a good recipe for Sourdough bread, something that has an authentic San Francisco tang? Because the worst thing about living in L.A. (as opposed to being up by the Bay) is the inability to find decent sourdough at just about any grocery store you walk into. That, and a very thin supply of good Italian delis.

I'm not really a fan of letting cultured yeast "go wild" to achieve a sourdough starter. (Read, I haven't had luck with it.) I'd use the Cal common yeast in a preferment of some kind if to really extract some flavor from it. If you want to get a sourdough starter going, there's two ways that I'm familiar with. First, do it from scratch using the yeasts and critters already in your flours, as outlined here. Or, second, purchase a sourdough starter and bake! King Arthur is good, but you should be able to find something closer to you that will have a SF sourdough starter. You might check over on The Fresh Loaf for a San Francisco sourdough recipe.

[Ozwald]

I seem to remember an older episode of Basic Brewing Radio where they made beer with bread yeast & bread with beer yeast. I don't remember the results exactly, but it seemed to be fine with the bread. I'd look through their archives for more info.

I've been wanting to get a nice sourdough starter going, and figured I'd do so as soon as I make my next batch of California Common. Would there be any sense, however, to giving the sourness a boost by pitching critters other than Saccharomyces? On a more general note, anyone have a good recipe for Sourdough bread, something that has an authentic San Francisco tang? Because the worst thing about living in L.A. (as opposed to being up by the Bay) is the inability to find decent sourdough at just about any grocery store you walk into. That, and a very thin supply of good Italian delis.

Again, they had an interesting experiment on BBR about this.

From my experience as a chef, I've done it this way. Mix your flour & water to get a goopy mix going. Leave it on the counter, uncovered for a day or two. This will allow the bugs on the flour & the bugs unique to your location to start working their magic (I don't pitch any cultured yeast into it). I then cover it with a damp towel for the remainder of it's life, and yes, you're probably going to want to name it (my last one was Herbert). You'll need to feed him every day to every other day with the same mixture of flour & water. To keep Herbert from getting out of control, I threw away roughly half before I fed him. Herbert treated me well for about 6 months when I finally just didn't have the time nor desire to keep him going.

For an interesting twist, you can dry your spent grain in the oven, layered thin on cookie sheets & grind that into a flour. Obviously from the mash & the oven, there won't be any bugs left in there, so you may need to give it 2 or 3 days uncovered to get it started or mix it with some regular flour which will have some natural bugs in it.

[be-rad]

I've been wanting to get a nice sourdough starter going, and figured I'd do so as soon as I make my next batch of California Common. Would there be any sense, however, to giving the sourness a boost by pitching critters other than Saccharomyces? On a more general note, anyone have a good recipe for Sourdough bread, something that has an authentic San Francisco tang? Because the worst thing about living in L.A. (as opposed to being up by the Bay) is the inability to find decent sourdough at just about any grocery store you walk into. That, and a very thin supply of good Italian delis.

My dad has a sourdough starter- whenever we all get together, at least one breakfast is of sourdough pancakes with bacon on the side. They are some of the best pancakes I have ever had. But thanks for the idea about using leftover yeast to make a beer-ish bread... I guess I'll HAVE to brew sometime soon-hahaha.