Spent Grain Pretzels

This year, Waldfest was on Sunday, July 17.  This year, we would do it in style.  What better way to kick off the day than to have and authentic Bavarian breakfast with weisswurst, a hefeweisen, and of course pretzels.  Not only pretzels, homemade pretzels using spent grain.

I decided to try something different this time with my grains, don't get me wrong, I like them in my breads, but they and the remaining husks can be a bit obtrusive when you are trying to eat a slice of bread.  In the past, I have tried to grind them using a food processor, but it is very difficult and more and more water has to be added since it turns into a paste and the grains are not properly ground.

As an alternative, I decided to dry out my grains by baking them in the oven at 250ºF for about an hour, occasionally turning them.  When they were dry, I put them in the food processor on high for about a minute and ended up with an excellent consistency, just about as course as sand, with no large husk pieces.  I was very happy with the results, as was my wife since I decided that from now on I would dry and grind my spent grains and put them in a Tupperware as dry storage, and they would no longer take up a shelf in the refrigerator.  The only problem is, the two cups that I saved (I needed one for the pretzel recipe), once dried and ground was only about 1/2 of a cup.  Looks like I would be making a half batch of pretzels.

Here is the recipe I used (the recipe is for a full batch, I just made a half batch).  The half batch made about 7 decent pretzels that are about 3/4" thick at the centers, so a full batch should make about 10-14 depending how big you make them.

1 pkg yeast

6 cups flour

1 cup dried and ground spent grain

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups warm water

5 tablespoons baking soda

Coarse salt for topping

Heat oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine all ingredients and knead.  Do not leave dough to rise.  Flour surface and then take a ball of dough, roll it out, and shape the pretzel.

Once all the pretzels are made, drop them in a pan of boiling water that has 5 teaspoons of baking soda.  Once they are done cooking, they will float to the top.  Remove them, put them on a greased cookie sheet, and sprinkle them with coarse salt while still wet.

Bake for for about 15 minutes, until they start to brown on top. Cool on a rack and enjoy.

When they are done baking, they should look like this:

For everyone that isn't going to be making these pretzels, I will give you a little something you can enjoy, even if you're not coming to Waldfest:

 

Primary: Lite American Lager, Ginger Ale
Carbonating: Honey Dunkelweisen
Total for 2011: 60 Gallons

Spent Grain Bread - Attempt 1 and 2

I got quite a bit done over the past couple days.  Yesterday I transferred the American Pale Ale into secondary and made about 30 yeast slants that are now ready to be inoculated.  Today we bottled the Rye-rish Red Ale which should be ready for consumption in about two weeks.

Anyways, onto my next topic for the day.  I am a baker by no means, but I try.  The latest attempts were a couple loaves of spent grain bread.

The recipe I used for the spent grain bread was fairly straight foreword:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup wheat flour
2 tsp salt
1 packet yeast
3 cups spent grain (ground with a food processor)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 egg (beaten)
milk
cooking spray

Mix flour, salt, yeast, spent grain, sugar, olive oil, and egg.  Depending on the consistency of the mixture at this point, you may want to add a small amount of milk or a small amount of flour.  Aim to keep the total amount of milk under 1 cup.

Lightly flour a counter top and knead dough for 10 to 15 minutes.  Shape into ball and let rise in a bowl that has been sprayed with cooking spray for 90 minutes.

Punch down, divide (or shaped as desired), and let rise for 60 minutes.

Score tops of loaves, preheat oven to 350 F and make loaves for 40 to 60 minutes.  Spray the top of the loaves with water before baking in order to achieve a crispier top.  Let cool on a drying rack for 60 minutes.

My first attempt at this did not go so well.  That go-around I will blame on my inexperience.  I had never baked a bread before and I was not sure what the consistency of bread dough should have been so what I ended up baking was a bit too wet.  When it came out, it was much too doughy on the inside.  Completely raw.  On the bright side, the bread had great flavor, so I decided to try it again.

After getting some pointers on doughs, I was ready for another attempt.  This time I did a lot more kneading and added a bit more flour.  These came out quite a bit better.  I got a little anxious and cut into it early (only about 20 minutes after baking) and it was still quite doughy.  As the night went on, it got better and better.  I cut into a loaf a day after baking and it was delicious.

I plan on baking the bread as normal at least one more time.  After that I want to try a few other things, one being a cinnamon-raisin bread (this is a very dense bread that lends itself to this very easily).  Another thing I may try will be adding some herbs, possibly a rosemary, olive oil bread.  I also want to explore the possibility of substituting beer for the milk and yeast off of the fermenter for the packet of yeast.  If anything turns out, I will post the results here.





Primary: None
Secondary: American Pale Ale
Carbonating: Rye-rish Red Ale

Peanut Butter Spent Grain Dog Treats

Last spring, Jay and I began to brew all grain. All we were doing with the spent grain at the time, was throwing them in the compost pile. That wasn't a bad solution back then (since we were using the compost on our hop plants), but I needed to find something to do with them now that I am brewing at home again. It isn't practical to drive twenty minutes to dispose of spent grains, and just throwing them in the trash just seemed like a waste.



Even though I don't have as many grains any more since I've switched to only doing partial mash (I just don't have the time or space for all grain) I had to find something to do with them. I started to do some research and I read a couple of posts in forums about people making dog treats out of them. I have a dog and I have spent grains. Seems like a match made in heaven. I modified the recipes I found a bit since most of them called for an all purpose flour, which contains wheat and is a common allergen for some dogs, so I substituted a cup of brown rice flour and a cup of oat flour for that.

The recipe goes like this:
4 cups spent grain
1 cup oat flour
1 cup rice flour
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix all of the ingredients thoroughly and spread out on a cookie sheet coated in cooking spray. Cook for 15 minutes, remove from oven and cut into pieces, then return to oven for 15 more minutes. Lower temperature to 250 F and continue to cook for 2 more hours, or until completely dry. If the treats are not completely dry, there is a possibility that mold will grow.

Here are a couple pictures of what you can expect:





In the future I plan on trying a couple variations of this recipe, perhaps by adding some honey or carob chips. If it seems to turn out okay, and passes the Indiana test, I'll post the results up here.

Primary: American Pale Ale
Secondary: Rye-rish Red Ale