Spent grain bread

I've tried to make spent grain bread before, and I always made the mistake of using too much and ended up with a heavy, soggy brick. These days I don't use any more than a handful. It's tempting to use more, but you cannot predict the water content accurately and it always ends up being too much.

Sponge:
15g sourdough starter
100ml boiled, but unfermented hopped wort from Beata Bitter
100g rye flour
a handful of spent grain from Beata Bitter

Dough:
Sponge +
200ml water
11g salt
400g strong white bread flour

Bake at 200ºC for 30 minutes and 150ºC for another 20, or whatever suits your oven.

The bread has a very soft, slightly doughy crumb. A bit too soft and fluffy. I might make the dough even drier next time, although it's already only 60% hydration. The supermarket bakeries clearly use malt a lot. It tastes fantastic, malty and sweet. No noticeable hop flavour.

War bread

The economic crisis hasn't got so bad yet that I have to make bread out of whatever is available like people do during wars and famines. However this bread does involve a bit of recycling of stuff that would otherwise get thrown away.

150g cold porridge
Handful of spent grain from Sunday's brew
Left-over sweet wort ditto
Salt
Enough chapati flour and strong white flour to make a soft dough.

I've heard of old-bread soakers and the odd handful of cooked rice making their way into bread, but recycling left-over breakfast porridge into bread somehow makes me feel filthy, like those people who fry everything in the same ancient bacon grease kept permanently in the pan. I try to put such thoughts out of my mind, but at the same time I'm not philosophically keen on my bread becoming a sort of bin for using up old stuff.

The bread is quite nice though. Chewy crust, nice oaty flavour. Here it is pictured with some of Iain's fantastic fennel salami from Gusto & Relish.

It's flat as a pancake because the dough is so soft, but that doesn't bother me too much.