beer

This is my second experiment with using beer brewing methods to make a bread.

This time I wanted to see how the flovor of hops would taste in a baked loaf. 

barley flour soaker. Leave at room temp overnight.

1 lb of malted barley of your choice... I used 90% special B and 10% chocolate malt. Place grains in a large pot and cover with water (no more than 2 cups) Slowly raise temp until it reaches 160F, then turn off heat, cover, and let sit for an hour. strain the liquid into a new pot. Save the spent grain for other fun stuff. 

add whole hops to the strained wort, and begin the boil. Boil for 30 minutes, keeping a loose cover on the pot to prevent evaporation. Allow to cool to room temp. Strain out the hops and your wort is ready to add to the dough!

Combine the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. Whisk together. Tear up the soaker and add to the flour mixture. Add oil, wort and water. Mix until you get a ball, then transfer to stand mixer.

knead for 5 minutes, rest for 2 minutse and knead 2 minutes more.

Place dough in oiled bowl and refrigerate at overnight or longer if needed. 

On baking day: Remove dough from fridge and allow to reach room temp, about an hour. Stretch and fold and place back into bowl. After 30 minutes, do this again. ferment until dough reachews 1.5x original size. Divide into 2-3 pieces depending on size of loaves desired (I made two, but I think smaller loaves would be better for a more open crumb). Allow to proof for and hour. Preheat oven to 500F. Add water to steam pan, insert the loaves and reduce temp to 450. After 15 minutes, rotate and reduce temp to 350. Bake for 30 minutes or until center of dough reaches 200f. 

The finished bread had a moist, chewy sandwich bread texture. It is not very sweet. I does have a nice malt flavor and i can detect a little of the hop bitterness and flavor. I think I'll add more hops next time!

NOTE: all these amounts are approximate!

SOAKER

2 cups barley flour

a few grains of instant yeast

enough water to make a sticky paste (about a cup... I didn't take exact measurements.)

FINAL DOUGH

about 3 cups bread flour

2 tsp salt

3 tsp raw sugar

1 tsp instant yeast

1 tbsp canola oil

about 1 cup of cooled wort

about 3/4 cup water 

My lovely husband brought two bottles of Polish beer. He is not an average man who enjoys his time with pals watching games and drinking beer. He said that he was given the beer and  I could make the bread with it. 

So I did. In my opinion the best place for alcohol is in food. I also marinated and baked a leg of lamb with the second bottle of beer.

1st build of the sourdough starter

Wednesday 1:30PM-8PM

7.6 g mature whole rye sourdough  starter

11 g water

9g whole rye flour (always stone ground)

Second  build

Wednesday 7:30 PM- Thursday 10 AM

all of the starter from the first build

90 g water

90 g whole rye flour

Final build

Thursday 9:30 AM-2:30 PM

all of the starter from the previous build

245 g water

245 g whole rye flour

Soaker: Thursday 9:30 AM-2:30 PM

500 g beer

475 g whole rye flour

162 g steel cut oats

Final dough:

all of the sourdough starter

all of the soaker

119 whole wheat flour

19 g salt

Combine the ingredients and let ferment for 10 minutes. Shape and score the loaf . Proof  it seem-side down for 1 hour.

Preheat your oven with a baking stone and steam pan to 500F. Place the loaf in the oven and bake for 15 minutes . Then reduce the temperature to 450 ºF and bake for 30 minutes.

Internal temperature of the baked loaf was180F.

I love beer breads, so when I saw the Team USA formula featured in Crust and Crumb (Reinhart) I had to try it. 

Reinhart points out that this formula is a bit unusal because it utilizes two distinct preferments (three, actually, as Reinhart says in the notes, when you include the beer).  It uses a firm starter made up from a barm as well as a pate fermente (old dough).  I used Beck's beer, which I had on hand instead of an amber ale.  I made the barm/firm starter and pate ferment from scratch using the formulas in the book. I also roasted my own diastatic malt powder to deactivate the diastase enzymes since I do not have non-diastatic malt on hand and don't have much call for it.  Toasting worked out just fine, but I was not prepared for all the smoke.  (Maybe I over-toasted it just a bit.)

I baked this bread with Pendleton Mills Power, home-milled hard white winter wheat, and Wingold Dark Rye flour.  I substituted 1 ounce of coarse rye meal for an equal amount of rye flour.  I found the formula produced too dry a dough on just the water called for (1/2 Cup) and had to increase that to roughly 1 1/4 Cup total.  Some of this is probably due to the home-milled whole wheat flour, which I find to be pretty thirsty in all cases.  More of it is probably due to the coarse rye meal.  The dough balanced out at a very nice texture with the additional moisture and my old Bosch mixer never broke a sweat on the four-loaf load, even with the several extra minutes of heavy work it had to put in while I adjusted the hydration.  Total mixing time came out close to 13 minutes.

After fermenting, degassing and fermenting again I shaped the dough into free-form oval loaves and proofed them in pairs on parchment.  They were scored and baked in pairs on parchment on my baking tiles under a roasting pan lid preheated with the oven to 475F.  I misted the loaves liberally before loading them into the oven, and again just as I lowered the roasting pan over them.  I found baking times somewhat shorter than called for in the book, but that is expected given the shape I used.  Boulles would probably have taken the prescribed amount of time.

This formula produces four loaves of bread.  I could not find a pleasing way to fit all four into my basket, so here are three of the four.

The crumb looks like this:

Calling this "beer" bread has a point, in that the addition of a nice fully hopped brew should add an additional flavor dimension of hoppy bitterness that is subtle and enhancing rather than strong and overpowering.  Perhaps I should have gone and bought the amber ale called for and drank the Beck's with lunch.  In any event that flavor dimension was not very prevalent in these loaves.  They are good, but I think these would be more accurately called whole wheat and rye.  I accept responsibility for that, for both the beer selection, which weakened that flavor component, and for the inclusion of the rye meal, which gave the bread a stonger rye flavor.  I'm certain this combination of divergences does not do justice to the original flavor.  The beer does add a softness to the crumb however, that is an excellent offset to the chewiness (IMHO) of bread flour.  The crust is not a crispy french bread crust that shatters when you cut into it, but has a very agreeable chewy bite that is also very flavorful.  Overall this is better than average bread, and I will make it again.  Next time I will get the proper amber ale and leave out the rye meal to see what difference it makes.

Thanks for stopping by
OldWoodenSpoon

Besides bread making, one of my other hobbies/interests is homebrewing.  I have brewed for over 15 years now.  I am an all-grain brewer which means I brew with grains rather than extract.  I am also an AHA beer judge at certified level.  You need to pass a test for this.  I am a member of a very fine beer club, QUAFF which put San Diego on the map beerwise by winning the National Homebrew Club of The Year award 6 years consecutively and several California titles.  You may ask yourself why am I telling you this when this is a bread oriented forum.

The answer is because I promised to bake bread for the National Homebrew Conference being held in Oakland, CA this year.  I promised four Ciabattas.  What I baked was 4 Ciabattas plus a bonus bread, my first attempt at a 6 strand braided Italian bread:

4 CIABATTAS

MY FIRST 6 STRAND BRAIDED ITALIAN BREAD

Comments and Suggestions Welcome

Modified from Toxo Bread's Ale and Cheddar Bread which I found via Wild Yeast. As made they have a very faint beer flavor and a mild tang of sourdough. The cheese offers up surprise bites of salty goodness. I think if I were to make this again I'd replace some of the water in the final dough with beer for a stronger beer flavor, and possibly add more cheese, possibly sprinkled over the top half-way through baking as well. I've got all sorts of variations I'd like to try with this, including upping the whole grain content if I can do so without sacrificing the crumb. That might involve incorporating an overnight soaker as well.

Pre-Dough

280g 100% Hydration starter

125g Guinness 

50g Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour

75g Bread Flour

Final Dough

- All of Pre-Dough

-660g Bread Flour

-360g Water, Lukewarm

-12g salt

-About 80g Sharp Cheddar

1. Mix starter and luke warm Guinness, add in flours. Allow to sit at room temperature until the starter becomes very bubbly and foamy - about 3-4 hours.

2. Add water to Pre-Dough, then flours. Knead for about 10 minutes, adding as little flour as possible, until dough becomes silky. Let rest 5 mins then knead in salt and cheese.

3. Allow dough to nearly double in size. Divide dough in half and shape into desired shape. Allow dough to proof until it has almost doubled again.

4. Preheat oven to 475F and when oven is hot, bake for 5 minutes at 475, then lower temperature to 450F and bake until internal temperature reaches 200-205F, about 20 minutes.

The crumb isn't quite as dense as it looks here. My cheese was very finely grated so didn't leave very many big holes due to that. It's hard to describe - it's very close, but not heavy or dense. Instead it has a plethora of tiny little air bubbles that have left it with a light mouth-feel to it.