I finally found a new spent grain supplier. Thank you Empourium Brewing Company. I asked if they would be willing to give me any spent grain from a round of brewing their amazing beer. I dropped off a 5 gallon bucket and waited for a call that they would be brewing and having any goods for me.
I’m pretty sure they were able to get 7 gallons of spent grain into that 5 gallon bucket. If you are unfamiliar with spent grain – i talked about it here a couple years ago. As the years have passed, i’ve updated my processes, a friend got me a dehydrator from goodwill and that definitely makes the process much less stressful. I also found that making the pans with a thinner level of grains makes it go faster – i know – obvious!
The biggest challenge with a bucket of spent grain is the timing of “dealing” with it. Max is about 24 hours – chilled – to either bake it, dry it, or freeze it. The reason is that it continues to ferment and it turns into something in the realm of not good. Hubby and I brought the bucket home and started bagging up the good, and used science and the granite counter to get them cooled quickly to put them in the freezer.
I filled the dehydrator (cool plastic shelf covers keep the grain from falling thru), filled 2 jelly pans and 3 pampered chef trays and put them in the oven at 170 for 6 hours or so, and kept enough spent grain out to make 2 sets of the spent grain i’m about to tell you about, 2 different types of cookies, falaffel-ish and then another round of dehydrator and oven the next day. I turned most of the dried spent grain into flour – it’s a nice earthy flour you can use as your main flour or as an enhancement to your other flour in a recipe.
Looks for the other recipes coming up!
I have made this spent grain bread recipe a number of times and have found I like the rounds better, as i can make 4, or 8 if I just want to feed 2 for a meal. With the spent grain it just seems fancier to have it this way. Original recipe I found to make this bread can be found on food.com.
Original recipe post I did is here and the only change is cutting it into 4 sections, making rounds and putting it on corn meal.
Spent Grain Bread
Ingredients
- 3 cups of spent grain (wet)
- 1 1/2 cups warm water (~100 F)
- 1 (1 tablespoon) package dry bakers yeast
- 1/3 cup sugar (white or brown)
- 3 -5 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Proof yeast in mixture of water and sugar (make a starter). You should see krausen in less than an hour.
- Put spent grain in large mixer bowl.
- Mix in starter, and start adding flour.
- Keep adding flour until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.
- Place dough in a large bowl (place 1-3 tsp flavored olive oil in the bottom of the bowl and roll the dough to cover in oil)
- Cover with a clean towel, and let rise until doubled.
- Punch down dough
- Form into a 1-4 round loaf and place on cookie sheet with a thin layer of corn meal under the loaf.
- Allow loaf(ves) to double in size, (30 min – 1 hour)
- Bake in 375 F oven 30 to 40 minutes until browned and a long pin, such as a turkey pan, comes out clean after being inserted into the center of the loaf.
- Cool before cutting.
Verdict:
I love this recipe! It always makes enough to share, which i love to do. or freeze the balls for future bread making joy with only the final baking process needed.
I recently have tried upping the flavor content and did basil and garlic. Tasty but need to figure out how much is enough!
If you try this recipe, let me know what you think!
