July 12, 2016 - 10:23am
Spent Coffee Grounds Bread? Ideas? Thoughts?
I'm saving up our spent coffee grounds (nice locally roasted Colombian coarse ground for the French press) and want to bake them into a sourdough loaf. Not the biggest sweets person so...ideas/thoughts? I'm thinking rye + grounds + oats (or sprouted oats?). Maybe a hint of cocoa or cayenne? or rosemary!
Now that I'm starting to feel comfortable with a country loaf I'm just looking for ways to expand :D
Thanks in advance!
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A better use of your coffee grounds would be to use them in your garden either as mulch if you don't have dogs (if they eat them, it can make them sick), or bury them in your garden to improve the soil.
Thanks.
I'm not so sure what they would contribute to the loaf. Possibly color but also some little bits that would not be necessarily pleasant in the mouth feel of the crumb. I don't think they would contribute too much flavor. Try eating some of the spent grounds sprinkled on a slice of one of your loaves with a bit of butter. Give it a good chew and see what you think. Let us know what you do and how it turns out.
Eating grounds can give you a caffeine jolt, even if they have already been brewed. They are, indeed, great in the garden, adding vegetable matter that will compost in place. Bugs don't like them.
If you want coffee flavor or color, you might try using the brewed coffee as your liquid and then add the grounds to the garden.
Let us know what you do and how it turns out.
You can even use instant coffee to kick up your bread. It's used in many "pumpernickel" breads for color. Compost the grounds!
but the texture will be very gritty/sandy. Even my wife, who adores coffee and chocolate, stays away from chocolate-covered coffee beans because of the unpleasant grittiness.
Paul
but I control the dosage. A bean or two is about all I want to attack at a time in my mouth.
In bread, it would feel more like a rock and in the crust, more likely to act like one, breaking teeth. Nope, unless the grounds were powder fine I wouldn't use them. I've ground charcoal too for a test and it is very important to get the bits as fine as you can.
If you are storing the cast away grounds, be sure to dry them quickly as the tend to mould. Don't want to add mould to the bread as well.
I'm keeping them cold so no mold, but I'm leaning towards drying them out. I think the fine grind would be really nice in some ways.
As was stated before you might find other uses for them,
I have used coffee in cookies. Its a Christina Tosi recipe for compost cookies where I put 28 grams of ground coffee into a cookie dough. It does add flavor and texture.
And you can always experiment. Who knows what you will discover!
Like me with my legume water bread...
I actually just thought about using cashew water to make some sourdough! I'm sort of leaning towards drying them out, grinding them finely and making croissants...
powder in mist dark breads. Coffee grinds just turn bread into something fitting for, Zombies, cadavers and extra terrestrials who have malice and intent on their minds. They are perfect for potted plants and garden soil especially if composted
I had the same idea for coffee grounds. I was looking to see if anyone had tried it. I know there's a lot of hesitation in these but what's the worst can happen? Sure there's a lot of intuition here that says 'maybe not a great idea' however you can't let fear of the unknown stop you.
Also there's the matter if personsl taste... i recon it'll be no more greater than poppy seeds on a bagel.
How about baking half a loaf and see how it goes?
Love to hear about the outcome! Thanks
Denver
I had the same idea for coffee grounds. I was looking to see if anyone had tried it. I know there's a lot of hesitation in these posts but what's the worst can happen? There is a lot of intuition here that says 'maybe not a great idea' however you can't let fear of the unknown stop you.
Also there's the matter if personsl taste... I recon it'll be no more grittier than poppy seeds on a bagel.
How about baking half a loaf and see how it goes? Love to hear about the outcome! Thanks
Denver
I wouldn't use the grounds in bread. Unless the beans are ground to flour consistency, they show up as gritty particles in the bread and wedged in your teeth. Better to brew some espresso and use that as part of the liquid. All the flavor and no grit.
Paul
I used the spent grounds, put through a Vitamix to make sure they were very fine, in some croissants but the flavor was not noticeable at all. I've since used leftover coffee (liquid) to make rye bread and it's wonderful! I do have some espresso brava salt that I suspect would work better at lending a coffee flavor but I've yet to try it. Contrary to what some folks are saying I don't think there's any real risk in adding coffee grinds as long as you make sure to finely grind them to espresso consistency. I'd say it's true that you probably don't want to add grounds that are french press consistency into a loaf but the finer, powder-like grind of an espresso blend is no harm at all, in my limited experience.
I recently bought a loaf of sourdough from https://www.todaybread.com/ which had used spent ground coffee and it was delicious. TODAY Bread had baked a rye sourdough with ground coffee and raisons in it which gave the bread a distinct dark almost chocolatey colour and note to it, but not sweet or gritty. The baked dough looked similar to a Tartine dough with semolina or polenta added into it, you could see some of the grounds and there was some marbling in the dough.
The baker had told us they'd started trying it out to reduce the wastage from their coffee shop. Next time I buy it I'll take pictures and share.
Ever since eating it, I've been trying to find a similar recipe or work out the quantities that had been used. @donaldG can you share your bakers percentages? Or how much ground coffee you used?