BeerBorg

I was originally going to post a specific question, but I decided to start a thread on cooking in the days of the Covid outbreak. Share whatever you want about difficulties in finding ingredients, what you're using, how/when you bought what you did, etc.

I haven't been to the grocery store for 4 weeks. I buy a lot of things in bulk, so I already had a lot on hand. I usually eat fresh fruits and vegetables, but bought some frozen vegetables and dried fruit just in case.

I ran out of fresh vegetables about a week ago. I ran out of fresh milk shortly after that. I had some powdered milk (ran out today) and managed to get some more delivered yesterday.

Now I'll ask the specific question that I was originally going to ask (and a follolwup question that occurred to me later).

I don't bake much (I actually don't often eat bread these days), but I know that ale yeast and bread baking yeast are the same species (just different varieties, bred for different purposes).

I've used bread yeast to make beer (or gruit), mostly as an experiment, but I've never done it the other way around.

With the hoarding that's happening, bread is hard to get. Apparently, yeast and flour are as hard to get as bread. My daughter wanted to bake, but couldn't find any yeast. I gave her some old yeast from a kit, and one package of US-05. I also triple milled some whole wheat and gave it to her to use as flour (but told her to use it to stretch her "real" flour, since it's not as finely ground as "boughten" (I don't remember where I heard that "word" but it fits) flour.

I'm going to keg a batch tomorrow. I'll use some of the yeast for the next batch and wash/rinse the rest and give it to my daughter to use for bread making.

How much of the harvested/rinsed yeast should she use for baking bread? I'm guessing 2 tablespoons should be about right. But I'm just guessing. Has anybody used harvested yeast? Does anybody have any suggestions?

Ona semi-related note, I'm also going to give her some dried spent grain to use as flour (I'll grind it in my coffee grinder first). I know it doesn't act ike regular flour, but is there a general rule on how much to use? I'm thinking of suggesting that she starts out with about 25% spent grain flour and go from there.

2 tbsp. sounds like a good starting point for me. If it is too little it will just take longer to rise and then you will know for next time. If it's too much then the bread will just taste a bit yeasty, but that's not necessarily a bad thing and it would be more nutritious that way anyways. So I'd just go for it and see how it works out and then tweak.

FYI, you can get 50# bags of flour from most restaurant supply stores, because hoarders don't go to them and buy 50# bags of bulk flour. If your sister has a bunch of friends who and to split it up, then that might be worth it (and it's cheaper then buying it in 2 or 5# bags).

If using high protein bread flour, 25% of spent grain is not going to be too much for a rustic kind of artisan bread. You could go 50% even but it will affect the results much more. It just depends on what you want to get out of it. The more added, the greater the impact on the rise/texture, unless supplemental gluten is added, then you can still get the same kind of rise. Basically she needs to treat it like a multi-grain bread made with other grains then wheat at the proportions used. Any recipe that accounts for that as far as gluten content will work just fine.

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked for restaurant supply stores some time back, and only found equipment suppliers. I just looked again and found one that sells food.

I sent my daughter the info on that place and she told me that her mom managed to find her a Costco bag of flour, but she's going to check it out for other things. And she has a vacuum sealer, so she can buy in bulk and break up into smaller packages.

I’ve been using a bread machine that I bought for my wife at least 20 years ago, I don’t think she used it once. I’m running out of yeast and there’s no yeast in the store right now.
I think that I could build a starter to propagate the one packet of Fleischmans that I have left. Has anyone done this? What’s the process?
I’ve read that you can make sourdough bread with wild yeast. That’s another way to go.I might try that if I can’t extend the yeast that I have left.

It's not hard to make a sourdough starter or find "yeast" - you can get yeast off of every fruit or vegetable or grain that exists (along with sour bugs). Just soaking some brewing grains in water is going to get you a sourdough starter too. There is plenty of yeast on those grains, just maybe not the kind(s) you want for brewing, and other things of course tag along. Its also floating in the air, it's everywhere man looking for something to eat.

Anyways, bread yeast you can just spin up on a stir plate or do a shake/swirl starter in a mason jar or what not with some sugar and malt extract just like if you were making a beer starter. It will ferment somewhat with just sugar, its happy to eat sugar - but it will run out of nutrients and peter out pretty quickly with just sugar, so that's not the best way, where adding the malt will provide some nutrition. Or you can use yeast nutrients instead. Just sugar is ok for "proofing" the yeast for bread making, but it's not the best way to actually grow a bunch more, it needs some nutrients. Bread yeast might not eat every kind of malt sugar, but that doesn't matter as long as your adding some regular sugar to it as well.

Did that make sense?

Also every ale yeast is going to make bread. So you can just spin up a beer starter and use part of it for bread making. You can make bread with the yeast from the trub of a batch of beer. You've got some stuid amount like trillions of cells in the trub of a batch of beer. You can make a hella lot of bread with that. As brewers we are basically a small scale yeast manufacturing plant when it comes to that sort of thing. Anything "off" isn't going to come through much in bread, it doesn't ferment for a very long time or have anywhere an much to ferment (far less stress on the yeast). It's just going to work.

There are instructions all over the internet for making sourdough starters. And add mashani pointed out, you can use ale yeast to make bread. It's there same species, just different varieties.

I had a sponsored post pop up on Facebook. There's a catering company that has had a huge drop in catering business, and they've got access to the commercial supply chain, so they're selling meals and groceries to the general public. I sent a link to the place to my daughter and gave her a dollar amount, so she now has a well stocked pantry, fridge and freezer.

I also remembered a coop kind of thing I used years ago (bountiful baskets). For about $20, they fill two round laundry baskets. One is fruit and the other vegetables. You don't get to choose what you get. But the price is really good, and it's probably safer than going to a store, so I signed up to get an order this Saturday

If you want to have a yellow color naturally without adding any artificial color you can add a few strands of saffron to it.
A little lit of saffron will not change the flavor but add the color.

SonCha055 wrote:If you want to have a yellow color naturally without adding any artificial color you can add a few strands of saffron to it.
A little lit of saffron will not change the flavor but add the color.

You can also use small amounts of turmeric for this purpose.