March 13, 2018 - 1:34pm
Good evening from the baking brewer!
Good evening!
I'm a very amateur baker but well-seasoned homebrewer. However I have had very little luck using instant dried yeast but decent results using brewing yeast. Does anybody have any experience using brewing yeast to bake? I hope to get to know you all.
Cheers,
CJR
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Good Morning. Nice to have you here.
When you say brewer's yeast do you mean you're using beer barm?
Hi there, nice to be here!
It's fresh, live ale yeast, skimmed off the top of a fermenting brew from a local microbrewery. I mainly use it for beer but thought I would give baking with it a go.
Or what we refer to as barm. What you need to do is make a poolish with it - a preferment. Allow that to bubble up and then make a dough with it.
https://www.sourdough.co.uk/the-complete-baker/
Good to know! I wasn't sure if it was the same thing as I read something about barm being made from ground millet. I ran off a batch of the bread in Lesson One using 2 tsp of the yeast last night. Decent rises although after scoring it, it seemed to expand more sideways than upwards. I'll post pictures later.
Perhaps too hydrated which you might want to lower for next time. How about the taste?
I've not tasted it yet.
the barm scraped off the top of fermenting beer. The commercial yeasts we use today are direct descendants of barm. Today, beer and bread yeasts have been genetically modified and improved by hybridizing them by folks wanting to improve both bread and beer.
Welcome and happy baking
I just decanted the beer I made destined for Vinegar, kept the dregs for use in baking, first time trying it, have to wash the yeast first :)
Whilst not the best bread I've ever tasted, possibly being due to being purely plain white flour, the crumb was rather compact with small pockets. The crust had a slight beery flavour, possibly due to over-kneading. Kneading was done using a Kenwood Chef dough hook at speed 2 for about 20 minutes. It took a fair while to come together. I'm thinking it was possibly over-kneaded and that I should give it a rest and add the flour in more gradual increments.