The wheat beer, or Bouza, I made last week didn't exactly make the best tasting drink ever. It did however leave me with a great deal of Ale-Barm. I used the Bouza recipe from Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
, and the bread I made from the barm was amazing.
The amazing thing (other than how good it tastes) about using the barm from this beer recipe is that it takes advantage of both spouted and fermented grains which are wicked-awesome for digestion and are suppose to have all sorts of health imbibing properties. The latest issue (Dec2012/Jan2013) of Mother Earth News
has a great article about baking bread with these, only by using the barm I can skip several steps and just get right down to the kneading.
I have come up with two recipes one that requires making a sponge the night before (has a nicer texture and richer taste in my opinion) and one that just uses the ale-barm as is (for a denser bread with a pleasantly sour taste). Both recipes use honey, which is NOT vegan friendly. So if you are cooking for a vegan please substitute with sugar or even better, maple syrup. You can make this without sweetener, but I found the bread far too sour without it.
When you strain your beer, do at least two straining One coarse to take out the mash (keep this as the main ale-barm), and then put the fine stuff from the second straining to one side as this has way more yeast in it. I'll call this uber-barm (because super-barm didn't sound quite so awesome).
If you cannot use all the ale-barn right away, you can keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, make sure you drain off any alcohol that forms on top as it will kill off the yeast. If it has been in the fridge more than one week, please use the sponge method to help wake up the yeast.
Sponge
1/2 cup ale-barm (beer mash)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup water
The quantities are given here for a mid sized loaf. Feel free to make up to 4 mid sized loaves in one go. But I find if I increase the recipe any more, I don't get as much bread for the ingredients. The law of diminishing returns and all that.
You know, I wonder why more bakeries don't team up with some of the micro breweries in town. This bread is unlike anything else I've ever had, I've just baked 10 more loaves and had to fight The Capitan for one to take to pot luck.
Allergy wise, you need to be aware of gluten, honey and yeast allergies. Apparently (and I've seen no scientific evidence to support this - yet - however my gut agrees) both the sprouting and pre-fermenting of the grain make the fibre easier to digest, so people on a low fibre diet might be able to eat this. Which is total bonus because low fibre diets usually lack in whole grain goodness.
A note about the word Barm: I've noticed that there are several uses of the word Barm in the Middle Ages. It can mean anything from the froth at the top, to the left over mash, to the leas at the bottom. In this article, I'm using what appears to be the more common meaning from Medieval source documents which is roughly 'the remaining yeast from fermenting drink'.
, and the bread I made from the barm was amazing.
The amazing thing (other than how good it tastes) about using the barm from this beer recipe is that it takes advantage of both spouted and fermented grains which are wicked-awesome for digestion and are suppose to have all sorts of health imbibing properties. The latest issue (Dec2012/Jan2013) of Mother Earth News
has a great article about baking bread with these, only by using the barm I can skip several steps and just get right down to the kneading. I have come up with two recipes one that requires making a sponge the night before (has a nicer texture and richer taste in my opinion) and one that just uses the ale-barm as is (for a denser bread with a pleasantly sour taste). Both recipes use honey, which is NOT vegan friendly. So if you are cooking for a vegan please substitute with sugar or even better, maple syrup. You can make this without sweetener, but I found the bread far too sour without it.
When you strain your beer, do at least two straining One coarse to take out the mash (keep this as the main ale-barm), and then put the fine stuff from the second straining to one side as this has way more yeast in it. I'll call this uber-barm (because super-barm didn't sound quite so awesome).
If you cannot use all the ale-barn right away, you can keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, make sure you drain off any alcohol that forms on top as it will kill off the yeast. If it has been in the fridge more than one week, please use the sponge method to help wake up the yeast.
Ale-Barm Bread (sponge method)
The quantities are given here for a mid sized loaf. Feel free to make up to 4 mid sized loaves in one go. But I find if I increase the recipe any more, I don't get as much bread for the ingredients. The law of diminishing returns and all that.Sponge
1/2 cup ale-barm (beer mash)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup water
- The night before you are going to bake bread, mix the sponge ingredients together in a large bowl. Cover with a cotton or linen towel and leave on the counter overnight.
Bread
100ml water
optional 1 tsp uber-barn (the extra fine sediment from the beer making process)
All purpose or bread flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbs honey
Olive oil or melted butter
- Combine the water, uber-barn (if you are using any) and honey with the sponge, mix vigorously to get some air in the batter. I don't know if the yeast likes air or if just makes me feel like I'm doing something useful.
- Add about one cup of flour to the liquid mix well. (I do this so that the yeast does not suffer shock from the salt and go dormant - though strictly speaking it must not be necessary as I've never seen any other recipe call for this step).
- Add the salt and another cup of flour, mix well.
- Keep adding flour and mixing, about 1/2 cup flour at a time, until the mix holds together as something like a shaggy dough.
- Turn dough out onto a heavily floured work surface, and leave it alone for min or two while you clean the bowl. This has two benefits: one, this stuff is really hard to get off when it dries, and two, it gives the dough a rest and lets the gluten start activating without you having to do anything.
- Kneed the dough until it feels smooth, adding flour as you need it so that it doesn't stick to everything. When it feels ready (I'm assuming you've made bread before, it's not really a beginners recipe anyway), give it a kiss and get the bowl ready.
- Poor 2 large glugs of olive oil (or melted butter) into the large bowl. Hold the dough by the bottom and use the top of the dough to spread the oil over the bowl. Put the dough right way up, and use your fingers to coat anywhere (dough or bowl) that didn't get coated with oil/butter. Cover with a dry linen or cotton towel, and put somewhere away from any drafts for a few hours to rise.
- Rising seems to be very forgiving with this bread. It won't quite double in size, or perhaps I just got impatient before it did. For me, it took about four hours to rise, but I don't think it would mind at all if I gave it ten.
- When it's ready, punch down and form into loave(s), slice the top (or you can do this just before placing in the oven) and cover with the towel and leave to rise (took me about 3 hours, but in my experience anywhere from 2 to 5 hours would be fine, longer for a lighter bread).
- For the medium size loaf, bake at 400 degrees F. for about 45 min. Make certain the oven is preheated before you place the bread in it.
- You know the bread is done if it sounds hollow when you knock the bottom.
- Cool on a wire rack as this bread seems to sweat more than regular bread. Please, if you have any love for me at all, you will not put in plastic until completely cool. If you need to pack them before they have a chance to cool completely, please either wrap in cotton/linen cloth or if worse comes to worse, a paper bag.
Ale-Barm Bread (straight mash method)
The quantities are given here for a mid sized loaf. Feel free to make up to 4 mid sized loaves in one go. But I find if I increase the recipe any more, I don't get as much bread for the ingredients. The law of diminishing returns and all that.
1 cup Ale-barm (beer mash)
100ml water
optional 1 tsp uber-barn (the extra fine sediment from the beer making process)
All purpose or bread flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbs honey
Olive oil or melted butter
- Warm up the barm for a couple of hours on the counter, to about room temp.
- Combine the ale-barm, water, uber-barn (if you are using any) and honey with the sponge, mix vigorously to get some air in the batter. I don't know if the yeast likes air or if just makes me feel like I'm doing something useful.
- Add about one cup of flour to the liquid mix well. (I do this so that the yeast does not suffer shock from the salt and go dormant - though strictly speaking it must not be necessary as I've never seen any other recipe call for this step).
- Add the salt and another cup of flour, mix well.
- Keep adding flour and mixing, about 1/2 cup flour at a time, until the mix holds together as something like a shaggy dough.
- Turn dough out onto a heavily floured work surface, and leave it alone for min or two while you clean the bowl. This has two benefits: one, this stuff is really hard to get off when it dries, and two, it gives the dough a rest and lets the gluten start activating without you having to do anything.
- Kneed the dough until it feels smooth, adding flour as you need it so that it doesn't stick to everything. When it feels ready (I'm assuming you've made bread before, it's not really a beginners recipe anyway), give it a kiss and get the bowl ready.
- Poor 2 large glugs of olive oil (or melted butter) into the large bowl. Hold the dough by the bottom and use the top of the dough to spread the oil over the bowl. Put the dough right way up, and use your fingers to coat anywhere (dough or bowl) that didn't get coated with oil/butter. Cover with a dry linen or cotton towel, and put somewhere away from any drafts for a few hours to rise.
- Rising seems to be very forgiving with this bread. It won't quite double in size, or perhaps I just got impatient before it did. For me, it took about four hours to rise, but I don't think it would mind at all if I gave it ten.
- When it's ready, punch down and form into loave(s), slice the top (or you can do this just before placing in the oven) and cover with the towel and leave to rise (took me about 3 hours, but in my experience anywhere from 2 to 5 hours would be fine, longer for a lighter bread).
- For the medium size loaf, bake at 400 degrees F. for about 45 min. Make certain the oven is preheated before you place the bread in it.
- You know the bread is done if it sounds hollow when you knock the bottom.
- Cool on a wire rack as this bread seems to sweat more than regular bread. Please, if you have any love for me at all, you will not put in plastic until completely cool. If you need to pack them before they have a chance to cool completely, please either wrap in cotton/linen cloth or if worse comes to worse, a paper bag.
You know, I wonder why more bakeries don't team up with some of the micro breweries in town. This bread is unlike anything else I've ever had, I've just baked 10 more loaves and had to fight The Capitan for one to take to pot luck.
Allergy wise, you need to be aware of gluten, honey and yeast allergies. Apparently (and I've seen no scientific evidence to support this - yet - however my gut agrees) both the sprouting and pre-fermenting of the grain make the fibre easier to digest, so people on a low fibre diet might be able to eat this. Which is total bonus because low fibre diets usually lack in whole grain goodness.
A note about the word Barm: I've noticed that there are several uses of the word Barm in the Middle Ages. It can mean anything from the froth at the top, to the left over mash, to the leas at the bottom. In this article, I'm using what appears to be the more common meaning from Medieval source documents which is roughly 'the remaining yeast from fermenting drink'.
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