Spent Grain Bread

For the past six months or so, I've been experimenting with making the bread we eat on a regular basis. I like the idea of healthy, preservative free bread that actually ends up being cheaper than a loaf of the same quality. First, I played around with this recipe -- just a basic mostly whole wheat bread. Then, I upped the game a bit and moved on to ten-grain bread with this recipe but with a higher ratio of whole wheat flour.

I really hate to see all of our steeping grains go to waste so I did some research and incorporated the grains from our Belgian Caramel Wit into some bread! I used this recipe as a baseline because it was the only recipe I could find that incorporated whole wheat flour.

How could I let this go to waste?!

The first time I made it, I replaced ALL the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. I also added 3T of vital wheat gluten.  I put the spent grains through the food processor to break them down some. They should also be wet when you use them and you should measure after they are processed.

Processing the grains.

The bread came out DELICIOUS! It was a bit too moist though and I didn't quite let it cook enough. It was also extremely dense and didn't rise very well. It really wasn't very pretty, but the taste made up for it.

Whole Wheat Spent Grain Bread

Super Dense

The second time I made it, I used 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 whole wheat flour along with the spent grains from our IPA. I still added 3T of vital wheat gluten and doubled the amount of yeast. It came out beautiful! It was perfectly cooked and much lighter than the first version. I didn't get to take pictures of the final product because we were late for Mother's Day dinner with L's mom. We took one loaf over to L's mom and she said I should sell it on Carolina Grown!

While this version was definitely a step in the right direction, there are still a few improvements I want to make. First, it needs to be a bit more chunkier so I won't process the grains quite as much next time. Also, I think it could handle a bit more whole wheat flour and a slightly nuttier/fuller flavor.

When we brew this weekend, I plan on making these changes and figuring out a way to store the grain that doesn't get used in the first batch of bread. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a recipe next week that is a bit more final than these.