Yeast + Water + Grains = ??

No, its not just beer! These things also combine to make bread. And when you use your spent grains from brewing they combine to make delicious, awesome, magical bread!

I am by no means an expert baker (or really any kind of baker), but the guilt of throwing away pounds upon pounds of grains after each brew finally convinced me to undertake the project of learning a new fermentation science. I did a little reading about bread making, made a mash-up of a few spent grain bread recipes from around the internet and gave it my best effort. It turns out that making bread is fairly similar to making beer. You add together yeast, water, grains and patience and you get a tasty product that you can be proud of.

I decided to make a denser wheat bread this time using the grains from our recent Octoberfest beer. I threw together all-purpose flour, wheat flour, a couple cups of spent grains ground up in the food processor, yeast, an egg, some milk, sugar and a little salt. Lacking an electric mixer, I made a half recipe this time so I wouldn't be kneading all day. I kneaded the bread by hand for about 10 minutes until it was smooth and pliant and let it rise for 90 minutes. Here the dough is, all nestled into it's bowl waiting to rise- isn't it beautiful??

After it doubled in size I pounded it down, molded it into a loaf on a greased cookie sheet (note to self: need pizza stone) and let it double again before scoring the top and tossing it into the oven for 40 min at 350° F. When it came out, it looked like this:

As my first endeavor into bread making, I am quite proud of my little loaf. It isn't the most beautiful loaf of bread, but it represents the beginning of something beautiful (and man was it tasty!!). With each batch of beer, we can now have as much delicious home baked bread as we can eat! When I have experimented with making a few more loaves and perfect a recipe that is my own, I will be sure to post it here. Stay tuned!