Using beer yeast in bread making.

[Dutto]

Went to Tesco yesterday and discovered that they no longer stocked the tins of bread yeast that I normally use.

Instead, they are selling bread yeast in tiny packets which results in almost a doubling of the price!

I pondered purchasing at the rip-off price and then thought "I dump about a kilo of yeast every week! Why am I looking at buying yeast anyway?" and returned home.

In the good old days I more than once used bread yeast to brew drinkable (but not necessarily Prize Winning) beer and wine so I figure that using the trub from a brew, or making up a yeast starter from straight sugar, would be okay in bread.

So here's the question:

"Does anyone use the yeast from a beer brew to provide the yeast in their bread?"​

 

[Halfacrem]

Bread Yeast was originally a bye product of the brewing industry, so go for it. You can use beer yeast harvested from bottle conditioned beer, or you could harvest some krausen, or probably some trub. You can replace the water in your bread for some beer also, though as I remember, it's best to heat beer to around 70 deg C to kill off the alcohol which might inhibit the yeast.

Alternatively, my local Asda gives me bread yeast for free, or chat up your local baker (and buy a loaf off him at the same time)

Happy Baking

 

[Dutto]

I've often used beer in bread (it gives a great "malty" flavour) but never bothered to kill off any alcohol. :lol:

In view of Halfacrem's comments I will wait for the next brew to complete in about a week (by which time the Stir Plate may be ready to use) and start a yeast culture specifically for bread.

Many thanks! :thumb: :thumb:

 

[Halfacrem]

I've often used beer in bread (it gives a great "malty" flavour) but never bothered to kill off any alcohol. :lol:

In view of Halfacrem's comments I will wait for the next brew to complete in about a week (by which time the Stir Plate may be ready to use) and start a yeast culture specifically for bread.

Many thanks! :thumb: :thumb:

Alright, not kill off :) I think Alcohol boils off at around 70 something degrees (disclosure, I'm going from Dan Lepard's excellent book 'The Handmade Loaf',). I've heated my beer when I've done it myself, but if you've had success without, then follow your experience :thumb:

I guess you could feasibly draw off some runnings from your mash and use in a loaf. You'd get the sweet maltiness without any hop bittering. Might try that along with some spent grains and an ale yeast.

 

[LarryF]

I've used bread yeast making prison hooch and it worked ok, I got very seriously hammered off the stuff once. For my bread I usually buy :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/500g-FAST...907894?hash=item1e7e97f976:g:r9MAAOxyni9TBOiv

Not sure if they are related to Mauribrew in any way but I wouldn't be all that surprised. 500g for £5.65, free delivery.

 

[Dutto]

Okay .... did it today after bottling the Woodfordes Wherry.

I didn't go for any sophisticated method because I was being chivvied along by SWMBO to go shopping so I just scraped some trub off the bottom of the FV into a jug, mixed the trub with some warm water, passed it through a tea-strainer to take out a few lumps of "something", added a tablespoonful of sugar and stirred it in and made the volume up to 700ml.

I then knocked up a bread mix of 1kg of strong flour, 4 tablespoonful of dried milk, 2 tablespoonful of sugar, 30gm of olive oil and 3 teaspoonful of salt. The 700ml of yeast mixture wasn't doing anything spectacular so I mixed it in with the bread mix using a Kenwood.

Normally, with that amount of bread mix and dried yeast 700ml of water will produce a fairly stiff dough that can be easily kneaded and knocked into shape but on this occasion it more or less turned into the consistency of a cake mix. i.e. Not "runny" but definitely not stiff enough to knead.

Undeterred I stuck the mix into two loaf tins, covered them with tinfoil, put them on the work surface in the kitchen and went shopping with SWMBO.

Big mistake!

When we returned after an hour and a half the dough was overflowing the loaf tins and I had to beat it back into the tins with a stick! (Actually, I stuck a chopstick into each tin and stirred the mixture around until it fell below the level of the loaf tin.)

Baked in a 250 degree oven for 45 minutes (I thought because it was so "wet" it would need time to cook all the way through) I have finished up with two very tasty loaves; and I have every intention of baking every time I empty an FV of beer.

Here's the finished product, minus a few slices of course. (There's nothing better than a slice of warm bread and salted Normandy butter.) :thumb:

 

[Dutto]

I bottled the Fulstows Recession Session yesterday so I made bread again ...

... and also put some trub aside in the fridge for future use.

Not being the most patient baker, I don't bother with the traditional "make dough - knead dough - wait for an hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - knock back - wait for another hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - bake".

My method is "chuck all dry ingredients into Kenwood mixer - add beer yeast mixed with water to correct amount (300ml for a 500 gram loaf) - mix for ten minutes - turn into loaf tin - wait for dough to rise (one hour) - bake".

The yeast creates the fine "bubbles" in the dough that normally occurs only after the "knock back" stage of traditional bread making so I am very happy with the result. :thumb: :thumb:

 

[Halfacrem]

I bottled the Fulstows Recession Session yesterday so I made bread again ...

... and also put some trub aside in the fridge for future use.

Not being the most patient baker, I don't bother with the traditional "make dough - knead dough - wait for an hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - knock back - wait for another hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - bake".

My method is "chuck all dry ingredients into Kenwood mixer - add beer yeast mixed with water to correct amount (300ml for a 500 gram loaf) - mix for ten minutes - turn into loaf tin - wait for dough to rise (one hour) - bake".

The yeast creates the fine "bubbles" in the dough that normally occurs only after the "knock back" stage of traditional bread making so I am very happy with the result. :thumb: :thumb:

Looks good. Bread benefits from time as much as beer does. Long, cool fermentation develops lots of flavour. However you've demonstrated that it's not essential in making a nice looking loaf.

 

[LarryF]

Really interesting Dutto, I've made bread (although not for a while) and always used bread yeast, but the next time I bottle I will definitely have a crack at using the trub for my bread. I did see on the program about very early baking that the yeast was scooped off the krausen in the town brewery daily and run over to the bakery for the days bread. The two went hand in hand with the bakery being dependent on the brewery. I'm wondering if this is why hundreds of years ago a master brewer was such a sought after person in a town in that without a successful brewery you'd have no successful bakery's. Any town with no beer or bread would pretty soon be a ghost town.

 

[Cqr]

I bottled the Fulstows Recession Session yesterday so I made bread again ...

... and also put some trub aside in the fridge for future use.

Not being the most patient baker, I don't bother with the traditional "make dough - knead dough - wait for an hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - knock back - wait for another hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - bake".

My method is "chuck all dry ingredients into Kenwood mixer - add beer yeast mixed with water to correct amount (300ml for a 500 gram loaf) - mix for ten minutes - turn into loaf tin - wait for dough to rise (one hour) - bake".

The yeast creates the fine "bubbles" in the dough that normally occurs only after the "knock back" stage of traditional bread making so I am very happy with the result. :thumb: :thumb:

What's the recipe for the bread please
Looks a perfect bread to me :thumb:

 

[Dutto]

What's the recipe for the bread please
Looks a perfect bread to me :thumb:

Yeast

I scraped out about 100 grams of trub into a container, chucked in 10 grams of sugar, added about 200ml of water and shook it all together.

After about 20 minutes the yeast showed great signs of life and started to ferment in the jar.

A few dark "bits" surfaced on top of the foam when it started to ferment so I removed these by sucking them up into a thin tube.

I then split the fermenting yeast into two parts:

o One was put into the fridge for future use.

o The second was kept on the worktop to use.

Loaf Ingredients

500 grams of strong flour
2 Tablespoonful of Milk Powder
1 Tablespoonful of Sugar
2 Teaspoonful of Salt
20 grams of olive oil
300 millilitres of yeast/water mixture

Method

With the exception of the yeast/water mixture, I chuck all the ingredients into a Kenwood mixer and let the hook stir everything up for a few minutes.

In the meantime I split the original yeast into two (as I always make two loaves) and made each half up to 300ml with warm water.

I pitched the 300ml yeast/water mixture into the Kenwood bowl and let it mix for fifteen minutes, scraping it away from the side of the bowl as required.

After fifteen minutes of mixing the dough was placed in a loaf tin (previously greased with olive oil), covered with a piece of kitchen towel and left to rise for at least an hour.

I then started on loaf number two to use the second 300ml of yeast/water mix.

After 45 minutes I switched on the oven at 225 degrees and just over 15 minutes afterwards the dough on both loaves had more than doubled in size (always a decent indication that the yeast has worked okay) so they were put in the oven to bake.

I stop the baking when the top looks okay so I couldn't say how long the baking takes.

The dry elements of the loaf vary so:

o If the dough is really stiff in the mixer just add a very small amount of warm water and let it mix in.

o If the dough is "wet" after mixing I don't bother adding any more flour. Instead, I just pour it into the loaf tin, let it rise as per normal and then bake it at a lower temperature (200 degrees) for a longer period.

o After putting a stiff dough into the loaf tin I wet my fingers and smooth out the dough so that the moisture doesn't escape during baking and the finished loaf doesn't look like the Himalayas.

Hope this helps. :thumb:

 

[BeerCat]

Good stuff Dutto. I guess the hops dont come through in the bread which is good. I am gonna try this, Funnily when my starter bottle exploded last week i thought the Mrs had been baking the smell was so good. I reckon Hef yeast would be great for this. If your looking to buy yeast go to a Eastern European shop. Was about 25p for a lump and google No Knead bread recipe if you have not heard of it. You wont be disappointed. :)

 

[Dutto]

Good stuff Dutto. I guess the hops dont come through in the bread which is good. I am gonna try this, Funnily when my starter bottle exploded last week i thought the Mrs had been baking the smell was so good. I reckon Hef yeast would be great for this. If your looking to buy yeast go to a Eastern European shop. Was about 25p for a lump and google No Knead bread recipe if you have not heard of it. You wont be disappointed. :)

Sorry, but they all seem to take hours to leaven (slowest at 24 hours and fastest at 6 hours) and the size of some of the "holes" is a sure sign that the ingredients haven't been properly mixed.

Using my system the bread can be weighed out, mixed, leavened, baked, cooled and eaten in a fraction of the time with no more effort than switching on a Kenwood. :thumb: :thumb:

I have made a similar recipe to the one above by hand (but with rehydrated dry yeast rather than yeast from trub) with similar results after only a few minutes of kneading and no knocking back.

In both cases, the bread has a structure that makes slicing for sandwiches and toast really easy as the bread will hold together no matter how thinly it is sliced.

If I want something really quick I make Soda Bread as per this recipe ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/irishsodabread_67445

The last time I made it was when unexpected visitors arrived last winter.

The Soda Bread was in the oven whilst I defrosted and heated up some homemade soup from the freezer. Everything ready to eat in less than an hour! :thumb: :thumb:

PS

"If your looking to buy yeast go to a Eastern European shop."

Didn't you vote "Leave"? :whistle: :whistle:

 

[Cqr]

Yeast

I scraped out about 100 grams of trub into a container, chucked in 10 grams of sugar, added about 200ml of water and shook it all together.

After about 20 minutes the yeast showed great signs of life and started to ferment in the jar.

A few dark "bits" surfaced on top of the foam when it started to ferment so I removed these by sucking them up into a thin tube.

I then split the fermenting yeast into two parts:

o One was put into the fridge for future use.

o The second was kept on the worktop to use.

Loaf Ingredients

500 grams of strong flour
2 Tablespoonful of Milk Powder
1 Tablespoonful of Sugar
2 Teaspoonful of Salt
20 grams of olive oil
300 millilitres of yeast/water mixture

Method

With the exception of the yeast/water mixture, I chuck all the ingredients into a Kenwood mixer and let the hook stir everything up for a few minutes.

In the meantime I split the original yeast into two (as I always make two loaves) and made each half up to 300ml with warm water.

I pitched the 300ml yeast/water mixture into the Kenwood bowl and let it mix for fifteen minutes, scraping it away from the side of the bowl as required.

After fifteen minutes of mixing the dough was placed in a loaf tin (previously greased with olive oil), covered with a piece of kitchen towel and left to rise for at least an hour.

I then started on loaf number two to use the second 300ml of yeast/water mix.

After 45 minutes I switched on the oven at 225 degrees and just over 15 minutes afterwards the dough on both loaves had more than doubled in size (always a decent indication that the yeast has worked okay) so they were put in the oven to bake.

I stop the baking when the top looks okay so I couldn't say how long the baking takes.

The dry elements of the loaf vary so:

o If the dough is really stiff in the mixer just add a very small amount of warm water and let it mix in.

o If the dough is "wet" after mixing I don't bother adding any more flour. Instead, I just pour it into the loaf tin, let it rise as per normal and then bake it at a lower temperature (200 degrees) for a longer period.

o After putting a stiff dough into the loaf tin I wet my fingers and smooth out the dough so that the moisture doesn't escape during baking and the finished loaf doesn't look like the Himalayas.

Hope this helps. :thumb:

Thanks I'am going to give this a go :hat:

 

[Halfacrem]

Sorry, but they all seem to take hours to leaven (slowest at 24 hours and fastest at 6 hours) and the size of some of the "holes" is a sure sign that the ingredients haven't been properly mixed.

If you're referring to large holes in bread, this isn't because the dough wasn't mixed properly. It's down to a combination of long fermentation and hydration. The more water in the dough (upwards of 70% Bakers percentage) and the longer the fermentation, the more likely the bread will have larger holes. I appreciate that having large holes in bread might not be everyone's preference, but it's not necessarily a fault of the baker.

 

[Spoc]

I bottled the Fulstows Recession Session yesterday so I made bread again ...

... and also put some trub aside in the fridge for future use.

Not being the most patient baker, I don't bother with the traditional "make dough - knead dough - wait for an hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - knock back - wait for another hour for yeast to work and dough to rise - bake".

My method is "chuck all dry ingredients into Kenwood mixer - add beer yeast mixed with water to correct amount (300ml for a 500 gram loaf) - mix for ten minutes - turn into loaf tin - wait for dough to rise (one hour) - bake".

The yeast creates the fine "bubbles" in the dough that normally occurs only after the "knock back" stage of traditional bread making so I am very happy with the result. :thumb: :thumb:

That bread looks great have you ever just used the last bit of beer instead of water as I will be making bread on keg day

 

[Dutto]

That bread looks great have you ever just used the last bit of beer instead of water as I will be making bread on keg day

I've used beer instead of water with dried yeast (and it tasted great) but not with "trub" yeast.

It's very tempting to just scoop the required amount of liquid and yeast out of the bottom of the FV and use it "in the raw" so to speak.

However, I tried to remove anything that had the potential to affect the taste of the bread (e.g. bits of hop, lumps of krausen etc) by mixing the yeast with water, letting it ferment with a bit of sugar and then removing anything that floated on top of the foam.

Plus, it's not as if I don't have enough beer to make the bread with! :whistle: :whistle: :whistle:

 

[Halfacrem]

What about a beer in cooking sticky thread? Dutto's bread has inspired me to get back on it (before Beer making, my obsession was bread making).

Other than bread, ale in pies and sauces etc.. I'm sure we've got some budding beer chefs!

 

[Cwrw666]

I don't really understand what the problem is with knocking back the dough. It takes about thirty seconds and hardly any effort at all, and the bread is noticeably better.
Using easybake dried yeast - I mix up the ingredients in a mixing bowl, add the required water, stir it in. Knead it for a few minutes and then put it somewhere warm to rise. After an hour or so I knead it again and put it in bread tins to rise for another hour. Then bake it. Like I say, hardly any effort at all.

 

[Dutto]

............ If your looking to buy yeast go to a Eastern European shop. ..............

I was only joking when I pointed out that we might find Eastern European shops in short supply ... :thumb:

... and then some **** does this!

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...4b4b02b0?cps=gravity_7588_7277035230484913136

The minds boggles and there's no suitable "Smilie" for what I think!