Baking bread with leftover brewing yeast

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norstar
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Baking bread with leftover brewing yeast

Post by norstar » Fri May 01, 2020 11:55 am

Lots of people asking about baking bread with beer yeast, so this might help.

I did this yesterday and it was a great success. My first time making bread too.

I had four small jam jars full of washed yeast from the last cake. I used two which came up at about 150g.

I see no reason why dried yeast wouldn't work if you rehydrated it first and made a starter in the same way as below.

I made a starter by pouring this yeast into a small bowl with a heaped teaspoon of sugar and plain flour to match the weight. Made a thick "goop" which started bubbling like mad and doubling in size after an hour. I panicked and started to make the bread immediately as a result.

Mixed with 620g tepid water, then added 16g salt and 1150g ordinary plain flour and mixed.

Leave half an hour to absorb water.

Then sprayed surface and hands with atomizer gun, turned out and folded about 10-20 times on top of itself.

Left to prove covered at room temp 2 hours. Noticeable increase in size!

Folded another few times. And proved again 2 hours. Again, growing!

Had a few problems with it being sticky so had to add more flour onto surface to dry it out a bit to work with - but I think that's me being not very good.

Final stretch into long piece, then rolled bit by bit and crimped on last edge.

Prove uncovered in fridge overnight (grows a skin which helps putting a slit into it when baking), turn out onto baking paper lined tray or buttered/floured loaf tin with cut in top surface, and bake 15 mins at 230 degrees C then 20 at 190, with a tray of boiling water at bottom of oven.

Turned out like the pics - I'm well pleased. No hops/yeast flavour at all.

From what I've read, you need to give it time to prove compared to normal bread yeast, and be careful not to knock the air out when you work it.

I did two - one "loose" on a baking tray to make it rustic like, and another in a loaf tin.

Pics: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/ca ... st-8868436

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Cobnut
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Re: Baking bread with leftover brewing yeast

Post by Cobnut » Fri May 01, 2020 3:26 pm

I've made bread a couple of times with yeast taken from yeast + trub left after fermentation. The first time was from a beer which was at the malty end of the spectrum - worked well. The 2nd time was a much hoppier beer. It made bread, but the hop bitterness was overpowering - it was not a hit with the family.

Other than that, it works a treat!
Fermenting: nowt
Conditioning: English IPA/Bretted English IPA
Drinking: Sunshine Marmalade, Festbier, Helles Bock, Smokey lagery beer, Irish Export StoutCascade APA (homegrown hops), Orval clone, Impy stout, Duvel clone, Conestoga (American Barley wine)
Planning: Dark Mild, Kozel dark (ish), Simmonds Bitter, Bitter, Citra PA and more!

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