Sharing some experience with Kefir bread
Hi
I'm relative new to this forum but has baked sourdough for several years. I mostly bake traditional dark rye breads with different nuts, whole grains and whatever seeds I have available and also rolls/buns. I'm planning on doing some posts on rye breads and share some of those wonderful danish rye bread recipes with the rest of you.
Back to kefir. I do a lot of water kefir drinks with different berry juices e.g. blueberries and black currant kefir with ginger and have experimented with bread leavening using just the kefir water. When done right I actually think that kefir bread can taste better than sourdough bread. I'm a lazy baker. I never activate my sourdough starter or create a a poolish. Typically I just pour in the kefir water (or sourdough directly from the fridge) and mix it with my flour, which is typically Manitoba flour mixed with old Scandinavian wheat sorts, and a little bit of honey, salt and water. I never mix it more than a couple of minutes and let sit on the kitchen table for 1-3 days until it's ready to be made into rolls (buns) or a bread and baked.
The leavening, when using kefir water, takes 12-24 hours longer but creates a wonderful result that include some of the fruit flavours of the kefir drink you have brewed.
Next i'm going to try the brine water from my vegetable fermentation and try if that can be used to leaven bread. That would be an interesting experiment.
Does any others have any experience with kefir bread?