perfidy

Part XXVII in the recurring series, “Periodic Bread-blogging With Johno!”

Most folks who know me know I love to bake. Get your mind out of the gravity bong; I mean bake bread. What only a few people know is the degree to which baking has become an obsession. For example, since January 1, I have spent about $200 on clothing, including a new pair of good hiking boots. In that same time, I have spent closer to $300 on baking supplies and related materials; classroom time, regular and specialty flours, specialty equipment, etc.

My wife recently had to talk me down from taking all my baking gear with us on vacation. I am now limited to the essentials: small vial of sourdough culture, digital scale, linen couche for rising baguettes, the Austrian brotforms for rising round loaves, the silicone baking mats, and the special curved razor for slashing loaves. Whereas my ostensible reason for baking at home is that the unit cost of home-baked bread is lower than that of store-bought bread not to mention that home-baked bread is simply always better, my actual reason is… well, never you mind that. Just know that I could stop if I wanted to. It’s just I don’t want to, okay?

At this point our small freezer is crammed to bursting with surplus product. I still have two or three loaves left over from last week’s wild yeast sourdough bake (It's ALIVE!), and there are now three loaves in there of bread made with strong ale and spent brewing grains. I believe there’s also a loaf of Alsatian walnut-onion bread somewhere deep in there; if not, I better get cracking.

Just this Saturday I was sitting at my local brewpub enjoying a fine cask ale and alternating my attention between the NFL draft and a mid-period Evelyn Waugh novel (the foregoing clause, I might add, has never before been written in the history of all mankind) when it occurred to me that, my being in a brewery, I might well be within spitting distance of literally tons of grains that the brewers have no need for. Sure enough, I asked my friendly brewer and was sent on my way with six pounds of spent barley and wheat fresh from the kettle, for free. (Six pounds, by the way, is enough for about fifteen loaves of bread, assuming that 6.4 oz of grains added to the mix equals about 20% by weight of the finished loaf. I don’t want to go much higher for fear that the yeast won’t be able to lift the grains and I would be baking a delicious brick.)

The next step is seeing how well spent brewing grains work in some of my favorite recipes. I make a white bread with wheat germ and a quick sponge starter that’s really great; I bet adding some texture and crunch will really bring that together. And my pain levain could really use a pick-me-up! Not to mention the aforementioned Alsatian walnut-onion bread, though for that recipe I’ll have to cut down the walnut oil so the texture is more chewy and less delicate, without destroying the character of the loaf. A-and, pancakes! Beer grain pancakes! Waffles? Waffles! Blintzes, bagels and bialys!

Why am I even at work today? I clearly have stuff to do!

[wik] A warning. If you’re in the market for a bread machine, you can do better than the Zojirushi X-20. Even though that particular model is way more versatile than most bread machines, in that it has a sourdough cycle for keeping starters warm, has customizable and programmable mix, rise, and bake cycles, and can bake cakes and meatloaf and stews, jam, and soups besides, well… let me put it this way: you’re gonna need your warranty. Repeatedly. And for what it costs to ship the damn thing to California, you could buy a new Black & Decker and have enough left over for a latte. End of rant.