If you’re used to making your own beer, you’ll know precisely what spent grain is. For those that aren’t, spent grain is the leftover grain we have after brewing beer. It is known as spent grain because it has been used.
Whilst spent grain might seem like a waste product, it can actually be used to make a wide range of things. One of the best uses for spent grain is using it to make delicious bread.
From sourdough and banana bread to pretzels and German bread, spent grain is a useful ingredient to keep hold of. You could even make a tasty bread to serve with your fresh homebrew.
In today’s post, we’ve listed the best bread you can make with spent grain. We’ll now take you through each one. If you’re looking for a great way to use your spent grain, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get started!
1. Spent Grain Beer Bread
To kick us off, we have a super simple spent-grain bread recipe that will help you use your leftover spent grain quickly and easily. If you’re looking for a no-nonsense, no-fuss bread recipe, this is the best recipe you can follow.
The only ingredients you need to make this tasty bread are spent grain, yeast, sugar, flour, and salt. After that, all you have to do is mix the ingredients together until you have a dough.
This process becomes even easier if you have a mixing bowl. If not, you’ll have to use your hands. This recipe helps you make 1 to 2 loaves of fresh, warm bread in just over 1 hour and 35 minutes.
In the end, you’ll be left with a slightly crisp, warm, fluffy, and soft loaf of bread.
2. Spent Grain Sourdough Bread
If you prefer a sourdough loaf of bread, give this spent-grain sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf a try. This is another recipe that can be made easily.
You don’t even need any prior experience of making bread as this recipe shows you a detailed step by step process.
The ingredients you need to make this bread are spent grains, flour, rye flour, water, central milling organic artisan bakers craft, sea salt, and stiff levain.
With these ingredients, you can make a beautiful loaf of bread that has a crusty exterior and a smooth, soft interior.
When we made this loaf of bread, we found that it had great absorption properties that made it a great side dish for a hearty bowl of soup. The bread effortlessly soaks up the rich soupy flavors.
This bread will take you longer to make, but the wait is well worth it.
3. Spent Grain Banana Bread
The next recipe on our list shows you how to make delicious spent-grain banana bread. If you have some ripe bananas and a generous amount of spent grains, you have to give this recipe a try.
It only takes 2 ripe bananas, the spent grains, all-purpose flour, salt, butter, sugar, eggs, and walnuts to make this bread. It is hearty, sweet, crunchy, and nutty.
The bananas give the bread a divine sweetness whilst the spent grains offer a more natural nutty flavor. Adding walnut or pecans to the recipe not only adds an extra nutty flavor but also gives the bread a great crunch.
For more sweetness and decadence, you could even add some chocolate chips to the dough. However, you probably don’t want to use chocolate chips if you plan on serving this bread with soup.
4. Spent Grain Pretzels
If you really want to impress your friends and family, you could make your own pretzels using spent grains. Pretzels aren’t commonly served with soup but they can be if you want to try something a bit different.
Besides, who doesn’t love a good pretzel? Despite their complex appearance, pretzels are actually quite easy to make. Shaping the pretzels can be a little tricky, but you’ll quickly master the technique with practice.
This recipe shows you how to do it perfectly anyway so you have nothing to worry about. The best pretzels to serve with soup are classic American salted pretzels. This type of pretzel can be made with just 9 ingredients.
Those ingredients are sugar, water, yeast, butter, salt, all-purpose flour, spent grains, baking soda, and vegetable oil. In the end, you’ll be left with a batch of crispy, soft, warm, and salty pretzels that your guests will love.
5. Spent Grain Honey Dinner Rolls
Most people prefer to eat their homemade soup with a fresh dinner roll. If you’re one of those people, this spent-grain dinner roll recipe is ideal.
Relatively easy to make, this recipe will help you produce a batch of fresh dinner rolls in just over 2 hours and with just 9 basic pantry ingredients. Spent grains give the bread a more earthy, nutty flavor.
Whilst this tastes great, mixing the flavor with some sweetness creates a much more enjoyable bread. As a result, this bread recipe includes honey.
The honey gives the bread a delightful sweetness that goes beautifully with savory soups. To make these dinner rolls, you need spent grain flour, yeast, cow’s milk, salt, water, honey, olive oil, bread flour, and melted butter.
6. German Spent Grain Bread
The next recipe on our list comes from The Spruce Eats. It shows us how to make traditional German bread using spent grains. The bread in question is more commonly known by the name bier treberbrot.
Bier Treberbrot is a delicious bread that can only be made using spent grains leftover from the beer brewing process. It is hearty, crispy, soft, and incredibly tasty. It has a strong nutty flavor that goes nicely with sweet soups.
We like to serve it with rich tomato soup. To make a beer treberbrot loaf, you need water, milk, yeast, honey, all-purpose flour, wheat flour, rye malt, salt, olive oil, and cornmeal.
Like the recipe above, the addition of honey gives the bread a much-appreciated subtle sweetness.
7. Spent Grain Sandwich Bread
One of the tastiest types of bread you can make using spent grains is delicious sandwich bread. This is one of the more versatile types of bread that can be used for a wide range of things.
We can dip it in our soup, make a delicious grilled cheese, make a tasty sandwich, or even just butter the bread and eat it how it is. Some people even like to make French toast using this bread.
Personally, we love dipping it in our soup. The crust is thick enough to stay firm in your soup, whilst the interior of the bread absorbs flavors perfectly. This recipe does have a longer list of ingredients but it’s well worth making.
8. Spent Grain Cornbread
You can even use your leftover spent grains to make a delicious cornbread. Cornbread is a popular type of bread eaten all over America. It is one of the quickest types of bread we can make.
As the name suggests, it is made out of cornmeal. It might not be the healthiest bread on our list but it’s certainly one of the tastiest. Luckily for us, it’s also one of the easiest to make.
You only need 10 simple ingredients to make this bread. These are corn, milk, olive oil, spent grains, wheat flour, cornmeal, eggs, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
Once you have these ingredients, you only have to follow 6 steps to make the cornbread.
9. Spent Grain And Herb Wheat Loaf
This spent grain herb wheat loaf isn’t too much different from the other loaves of bread on our list. However, it is packed with more flavor. Surprisingly simple to make, the main difference between this loaf and others is how it is seasoned.
To give the bread an impressive flavor a herb mix of sage, rosemary, and thyme is added to the bread mix. These three herbs give the bread a strong herby and fragrant flavor you’ll love.
The other ingredients needed to make this bread include bread flour, wheat flour, spent grains, yeast, water, herbs, cornmeal, olive oil, and flour.
10. Spent Grain Pretzel Bites
The final spent grain recipe on this list is a simple pretzel bites recipe. There’s not too much to say about this recipe because it’s almost exactly the same as the pretzel recipe we spoke about above.
However, instead of making a classic pretzel, this recipe shows you how to make smaller pretzel bites. These bites are perfect for dipping and offer something a bit more unique.
The outside of the pretzels is crisp and sweet, whilst the inside is soft, fluffy, and savory. What’s not to like?
Final Thoughts
There you have it, 10 delicious spent grain bread recipes you can make at home. All of the bread recipes on our list help you make the most of your spent grains.
All the bread on this list also goes brilliantly with a bowl of homemade soup. Now you have this list at your fingertips, you need to decide which type of bread you’re going to make first.
