Using yeast from unfiltered beer
I have started an experiment, but now need some advice. I’ll try to lay out things as clearly as I can so hopefully someone can help.
In general I am trying to make bread using yeast from a local, unfiltered and unpasteurized beer.
On Monday I made a “starter” (a sponge?) by mixing 180 grams of flour (a mix of whole wheat and bread flours) with about 260 ml of the beer (after swirling it up to resuspend as much yeast as possible.
Over the next few days bubbles began to show up in the starter, slowly, but surely. I decided to feed the starter with more flour on Thursday. Things seemed ok, but, really, I have no idea since I’ve never done this before.
This morning (Saturday) I mixed the whole starter with another 150ish grams of flour in my bread machine and ran it on the dough setting. I always use my bread machine dough setting for all my breads (but don’t ever bake then in there). The dough came together great in the 1st 5 minutes, but then went completely slack. It was a sticky mess. I added more floury try to get it to come together. And then more. And then even more. It never balled up again, but I let it go through the rest of the dough cycle anyway. It was so weird - it went from looking incredible to an absolute mess.
At the end of the dough cycle it looked like a batch of cake batter. I was going to throw it out as a failed experiment, but decided to scrape it into a bowl just to see what happened. At this point, rather surprisingly, the dough has risen...maybe a 25-50% increase over 10 hours. I am going to let it go overnight and see what it looks like in the morning .
So...assuming it looks ok in the morning what should I do? I’m just not sure what the next steps should be in terms of shaping and baking this. Do I just turn it out, shape it (how?), and then let it rise more before baking? I guess I’m concerned about screwing it up now that it seems to be actually working again.
Any thoughts, ideas, advice, comments?
Nice ingenuity! Even if it’s not what you were hoping...yet. I can’t say that I have any idea as to what is going on, for sure. My thinking is that it didn’t have enough time to build a large enough yeast colony, before you made your bread dough. Others, with more science can probably pinpoint it for you. But, if by morning, it still doesn’t look workable, all may not be lost. You may still be able to give it time, and bring it to a successful conclusion. The salt that’s in there (I’m assuming there’s salt in it) isn’t great for a starter, but a pâte fermentée has salt in it, unlike other preferments which do not, and it still has a “seat at the table” of options available to the baker.
Best wishes!
Actually, there’s no salt in there. I didn’t add any when I made the starter and then completely forgot to add it when I attempted to complete the recipe yesterday. it’s just a mix of flour and beer (with the beer yeast)
The dough has risen nicely. Definitely has doubled in size. This dough has been so worked however that I don’t really know where I am in terms of the process. I’ll probably try to shape it now and then go from there.
Here’s the dough now. I don’t have a before photo unfortunately, but imagine sticky cake batter, just about filling half the bowl.
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and if you repeat, it may come out very differently. Save some of the starter to feed.
Try your recipe again with salt in the beginning and see how it differs. Hope you're keeping notes. :)
out of it, even just pancakes, don't throw it out. "Flatbread" is a thing. Muffins too.
BTW, There is a type of Italian bread that does not have any salt. The salt comes from the highly salted meat and other toppings they put on it. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mystery-italy-saltless-bread-trade-wars-salty-hams https://www.thegrandwinetour.com/popular-foods-of-italy/why-tuscan-bread-has-no-salt/
And, at worst, see if the birds like it.
Thanks for all the replies so far. I decided to go ahead and turn it out and shape it. Very stingy as it pulled away from the bowl, but after a little bit of folding and pulling it came together nicely. Looks like it might be ciabatta-esque. Now giving it time to do its thing. No idea how long that will take with this dough! This has been the weirdest experience, but I guess that’s to be expected with an experiment like this.
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That looks good! I will definitely be checking back to see how things turn out, and hopefully you give us a review on the flavor, too.
I would be interested in trying this out, myself. I would also like to get my hands on a bit of spent grains, from a brewer, and make some bread with that.
So...I let this bread rise for 6ish hours then decided that was plenty of time so baked it at 460F for 25ish minutes with steam.
Definitely not ciabatta-esque. The crust is great, but the crumb is much tighter than I would have predicted. It’s also quite bland. Some nuttiness from the whole wheat flour, but that’s it. It will be fine for toast in the morning.
I’m really glad I got bread out of this, but was really hoping for something more exciting.
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Looks like it could have benefited from being scored, after all. Live & learn. Still looks like a great loaf of bread, though! One of my favorite things to do with a bread that doesn’t have the flavor I was hoping for, is to take a salad plate, pour olive oil on it, sprinkle salt on the oil, and drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Then take a nice thick slice of bread (about an inch) and lay it, cut Side down, in the oil/salt/balsamic mixture for a couple seconds, then eat. The vinegar will bring out flavors you never knew were in there.
Thanks. I’ll give that a try...sounds delicious!
Do you use Modena Balsamico?
I love the tast of it if it is at least 8 years old. To bad the realy old variation (30 years) is above my budget ?.
What I currently have, is only three years old, I have had some older (8-10 years) occasionally, and it was incredible...and yes, that 30 year old balsamic is way expensive, and definitely a Bucket List item. I have never even tried it. When I went out to do my bulk shopping (the best AI could do, considering) at the very beginning of this home isolation, I made sure to grab a bottle of the Kirkland, sold at Costco. Maybe it’s crazy, but it was definitely not something I wanted to run out of. The thirty year old stuff, though...someday...sigh...someday...
I have seen the family that makes that stuff on tv.
And yes maybe some day a very small bottle good be a option.