Spent grain bread.

One of the great things about hand made beer is that there are some by-products.

The top one for anyone who uses specialty grain or is an all grain brewer is of course spent grain.

Specialty grains draining in a strainer.

For extract brewers, specialty grain is used in small amount to add additional colour, fermentables, flavour and mouthfeel. Usually, it's steeped in water at about 80C to extract all of the characteristics which you've chosen it for.

Afterwards, a lot of brewers throw it out, others use it for mulch in the garden.

But I'm weird. I bake bread with it.

Close up of spent grain.

Have a look back here for the basic bread recipe: http://yeastygoodness.blogspot.com/2009/03/simple-linseed-and-oat-loaf.html. Use that recipe, but leave out the linseed grain and the rolled oats.

How much spent grain is needed? About 100 grams or a big breakfast bowl worth will be enough for one loaf. Find some inventive way to use the remaining grain.

It's necessary to add more olive oil to this recipe to help keep the bread moist a little longer. Very grainy loaves tend to become stale a bit faster than plain old white bread.

After adding the first cup of water, it's spent grain time. Add about three or four heaped tablespoons into your machine. Let it mix through the half-wet flour very well and add water a little at a time until the dough balls stands up and begins to be kneaded.

There is residual water in the grain, so expect the dough to become too wet. To fix that, add flour one tablespoon at a time and wait a moment until it is taken up. You will get a feel for this as you go.

Proofing and second rising are just the same as with any other loaf.

Dough after proofing.

You can decorate the loaf in just the same way as the original recipe mentioned above. At that time you can add more grain if you like.

Decorated loaf before baking.

Done!

One of the great things about this recipe is that the grain makes the bread a lovely brown colour from the remaining colour in the grain. Not only are you giving yourself a truly flavoursome bread but you're doing good things for your insides as well.

Lovely colour, tastes great.

Happy Baking!!