Bread

I don’t have any experience with bread.  This was my second attempt with a very basic recipe (water, yeast, sugar, salt, and flour) in a dutch oven.  It’s actually pretty damn good.  I’m going to try to bake some more on Sunday.

Once you get the hang of it, try using a cup of spent grain in place of a cup of whole wheat flour (and reduce the water a bit) and get some interesting taste and texture at no extra cost. I always take a few cups of my spent grain and put it in the freezer for use in making bread.

Nice 2nd go at breadmaking, a warm hunk of that dunked in N/A coffee stout would probably be pretty damn tasty. A word of warning though, making bread can be about as addictive as brewing, which isn’t surprising as the both entail a buttload of carbs, an infinite variety of possible permutations and ingredients, and a lot of yeast wrangling. Hmmm, ya got me thinking, it’s been over a year since I’ve made bread, and the game does start kinda late tomorrow…

Been on a bread making hiatus due to a temporary low carb diet. Made a miche today: 100% whole wheat and sourdough. Fed barm night before last, built to a firm starter yesterday, made dough and baked today. One huge loaf. Tasty.
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Today’s loaves and rolls

I got my first taste of making dough back in 1987 when a friend opened a pizzeria. Being the obsessive person I am, jumped in with both feet, and to this day I love making different types of dough. As you may know, bread and beer making is very similar in concept and identical as an art form!!  At one point I came across a book by Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery. Purchased her book and it honestly helped me become a better maker of dough. If you are interested in her book, here is the ISBN# 679-40907-6

Cheers!

:+1:

Started baking bread in the last few weeks as one of the many things to pass time with the kids while we are cooped up.  We’re having fun with it, but I’m running low on bread yeast and don’t want to hit the store (plus it’s snowing out today).

Anyone have experience using yeast slurry for baking?  I’ve got two batches to keg this weekend, so I’ll have fresh slurries of West Yorkshire and Ardennes.  Just no idea how to use it in bread or how much to use…

It will work, but not as well.  Bread yeast is bred for CO2, beer yeast for alcohol.

Thanks.  Any recommendations on amounts?  I would be planning to use slurry, which is not quite the same as just tossing in a packet of dry yeast.

Good to hear from you, Denny.  Hope you’re staying safe and healthy.

You, too, Joe!  No recommendations I’m afraid, but I know there are a lot of brewers who’ve tried it recently so maybe can give you an idea.

I recently bought some yeast online and in the package the vendor sent a recipe card for milk bread with Lalvin 71B wine yeast as an ingredient. They sent me two packages @5 grams each to use in the recipe.

I look forward to baking their recipe with their yeast.

The homebrew yeast calculators estimate the number of cells for dry yeast and slurry. You could start there. For a given amount of bread yeast estimate how many cells: it’s dry yeast and probably has the same cell density as dry beer yeast. Then use the equivalent amount of slurry: the volume that has the same number cells.

I am not a bread maker. Based on Denny’s comment that bread yeast is bread for co2 and beer year for alcohol you might want to use extra slurry. Maybe enough for 50% extra cells. But I am not sure about that.

Edit: I just saw this was a week ago.  Too late.

No worries.  Thanks for the response nonetheless.

I bought some bread yeast so no experiments with slurry.  Probably going to make some dough later today.

I bought 2 lb. of Saf Instant bread yeast on Amazon

I don’t think I ever read a story about using beer yeast in bread making that turned out well…

I’ve done it several times with acceptable to good results. From looking at the notes from the times I actually recorded what I was doing I used 1/2C to 1C slurry in lieu of part of the volume of liquid for a 2 loaf batch. I’ve also used VERY [as in 30 years] old dried brewing yeast before with no problems.

Getting in on the action. A small loaf of white bread made by a novice. It was good.

I make the families weekly sandwich bread

Is there such a thing as bad homemade bread, at least when it’s fresh out of the oven? :slight_smile: