Has anyone ever used the (washed) liquid yeast from a secondary fermenter to make bread? I just harvested the yeast from my latest batch(IPA) and was toying with the idea of making bread with it(actually, asking my wife to do it). Anyone have any experience doing this?
Bread yeast is sacc yeast. In the old days, bakeries were located next to the local brewery for the yeast supply. I like to use it in a slow rise dough like this one: http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/easy-no-knead-dutch-oven-crusty-bread.aspx
It’s a great, simple recipe that makes a wonderful crusty bread. I’ve made this one many times and I often add a cup of spent grains. I keep some spent grains in the freezer just for this.
Just try to use fairly clean yeast without much hop matter or it will be bitter. Don’t use spent grains containing mash hops either.
Thank you for the link.
I would also be concern about bitterness of yeast from hoppy beers.
I’ve not yet used yeast from a batch of finished beer in bread but I was out of bread yeast and had a packet of us-05 and used that. no noticeable difference from using regular bread yeast.
This is a great idea. I make that bread recipe all the time, replacing the water with different beers. Even with 12oz of beer, the beer’s flavor mostly bakes out, so I wouldn’t worry much about hop particles or flavor in the tiny amount of yeast you’ll be using. According to http://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/yeast_converter.html replace the 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast with 1/2 tsp of fresh yeast.
Although I haven’t tried it, the consensus is that it works, although not as well as bread yeast. Beer yeast is bred to eat sugar while bread yest is bred to make CO2…or so I’m told. While there is some xover, each is a bit specialized for its task.
I have tried the aforementioned recipe subbing beer for water as well. I tried it with stout, but it didn’t have the stout character I hoped for. I tried it with a hoppy beer and it was unpleasantly bitter.
Can’t remember where I read or heard it, but beer yeast is best suited for a slow rise dough, hence the dutch oven recipe. But I have had success reusing beer yeast for pizza dough.
Awesome…thanks for all the replays. The Mrs will be giving it a try tomorrow.
I’ll post then and let everyone know how it turned out.
Thanks again
I’ve found that bread is a great use for beers that just don’t cut it or are over carbed. I just made a loaf with an old porter gusher. Turned out great.
Jeff Renner would be the expert, should the Batsignal be turned on?
I tried an IPA once and it was bitter. I thought it would be good with chicken soup (richness and fat to counter the bitterness) but yeah, by itself it wasn’t great. Berliner weisse makes great bread.
I’ve never heard that about beer yeast, but slow rise dough is great. Many of the enzymatic reactions that happen in the dough overnight are the same as those in a mash.
I’ll have to try berliner weisse bread…if I ever get around to brewing one. I would guess a wee heavy bread would be nice.
Berliner bread is like easy, faux sourdough. The organisms in a sour mashed berliner are the same as those in a sourdough starter, so you get all the flavors and aromas. I wouldn’t call it sourdough, because it’s not as intense as real sourdough. But it’s definately more interesting than plain yeast risen bread. I’ve wanted to try using freshly soured wort so the souring organisms could keep working overnight on the bread. I have not gotten around to it though.
I believe bread yeast are also selected for quick fermentation (and not just the quick rise yeast) so they chew through the sugar in the dough faster than beer yeast, which are selected for other factors. I’d think adding more beer yeast than you would bread yeast would help overcome the lag.
That would be great…it’s been too long since we’ve heard from him! Please give him my regards of you see him!
Da-da da-da da-da da-da, da-da da-da da-da da-da, Breadman!
Good answers above, but as a baker by trade and a brewer by passion, I do have some thoughts. Baker’s yeast and brewer’s yeast (though not lager yeast) are selected strains of the same species, S. cerevesiae. There are several strains of wet and dry baker’s yeast that behave a bit differently in their rehydration needs and speed of fermentation, but all originate from brewer’s yeast. They all have been selected for quicker fermentation than brewer’s yeast in a dough medium.
Brewer’s yeast certainly does work in bread, but my experience is that it is slower. It helps to wash it to avoid bitterness, and you need to use more. One difference between beer and bread is that with bread, you want the other micro-organisms to to grow along with the yeast for a more complex flavor, so using less yeast and letting it take its time makes better bread. With beer, of course, you don’t want those other critters at all.
It’s been a while since I baked with harvested brewer’s yeast, but my recollection is that it made a bread with a somewhat fruity flavor and aroma.
I suspect that some brewer’s would work better than others. My guess is that a good, top-cropped yeast like my favorite, WLP022 (which I myself brought back from Ridley’s Brewery and supplied to Chris White) might be a good choice as it’s easy to collect lots of clean yeast from the top.
I also fermented beer many years ago with wet baker’s yeast, and I don’t recommend this. It had a definite phenolic, “wild yeast” flavor. I suspect that it has the same gene as Bavarian weizen and some Belgian yeasts, and which has been selected against in most cleaner brewer’s yeast. But I wanted to replicate the old prohibition recipe - can of hopped malt extract, five pounds of sugar, hot water to five gallons in a stoneware crock. Float a cake of yeast on a slice of rye toast and as the toast disintegrates, the wort cools and the yeast diffuses into the very warm wort.
Sorry for the delay in getting back with everyone.
I did a starter with my standard DME pitch that I do the night before I brew. Wifey made her standard “3 hour” bread where she used her basic hearth receipt. She used 1/2 of the pitch for the starter sponge and the other 1/2 for the dough. Honestly, it tasted like her usual batch of bread, with a little bit of a lighter texture. It was a good exercise in the process, but I’m not sure it was worth the extra effort…though I appreciated it more while eating.
bump because i searched for a tjread like this after hearing a very recent talk by chris white where he did mention (or i interpreted it this way) that you can make some characterful bread using a characterful beer yeast.
I have made thousands of pizzas and into the hundreds of yeast-risen breads but i think i have only used fleischmann’s dry for all of it.
i really intend to try using some beer yeast in a bread soon. but if anyone has any experience, would still love to hear it