My compost worms no longer love me.

It’s sad, but true. The main diet that my happy little compost worms lived on up till recently was spent grain (the leftover grain from brewing day); that was until I finally decided to try my hand at making my own bread from it, instead of feeding it to the hungry, hungry wormies. I had heard of it being done, but as you may know I am really not much of a baker. I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of cook; a pinch of this, a shake of that…you know, not measuring a damn thing. This does not a good baker make…

So I searched around a bit, and came up with the base for a recipe I could see myself safely screwing with the ingredients at least a little bit This one at Bklyn Foodie (a take on a Jim Lahey recipe) served as my base – a simple no-knead recipe -SUPER!

Here’s my take:

• 1.5 cups bread flour
• 1.5 cups spent grain
• 1 cup flax seed (or any seed you like I guess, I just love flax)
• 2.5 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp instant dry yeast
• 1 1/3 cups cool water (may not need all of this depending on how wet the grain is – go slow!)
• extra 1/2 cup flour for dusting

Rehydrate the dry yeast in 1/3 cup of luke warm water. If the yeast is good it will double or triple in size in about 10-15 minutes. Use yeast within 30 minutes of finishing rehydrating. I’m considering trying a beer yeast for the bread at some other point…not sure if that’s a viable idea yet…another day’s post.

Super active bread yeasties!

Mix together all ingredients, excluding water in a medium bowl; I used the dough hook on my stand mixer because I am lazy, but you can mix it by hand. Add water a couple of tbsp at a time till the dough is totally combined and pretty sticky. My grain was pretty wet (I froze a couple of lbs from my last batch and defrosted for the recipe) so I only needed about 1/2 of the water.

Cover the bowl with a dinner plate or some cling wrap and put it somewhere warm, out of direct sunlight, and not drafty for about 12-18 hours. When it’s ready it should have about doubled in size (mine was a little less, I think the weight of the grains contributed to this) and will be covered in teeny little bubble holes. I left mine for almost 24 hours and it was fine.

Take a cotton/linen tea towel and dust it with the remaining flour you put aside. Scrape the dough out of the bowl – all in one piece – and form a ball on the towel. Wrap the dough an put it aside in another (or the same) warm, non-sunny, non-drafty spot to rise again for another 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees and 1/2 hour before the 2 hours of rising is up, throw your pan (must have a lid) that you plan to use to bake in, into the oven to preheat. I used a 2.5 quart saucepan; just be careful if you use something with a handle…I stupidly grabbed mine after it came out of a 475 degree oven : / Yay for no fingerprints on three fingers!

Take the pan out of the oven and tip the dough in. Bake covered for 25-30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 25-30 minutes. This bread seems to need a little longer in the oven than you would expect, I guess it is pretty dense!

I suggest trying it with some butter while still hot, you will not regret it!! Oh my goodness….I can’t believe I’ve been feeding this deliciousness to my WORMS!

Homebrewers, this recipe is super easy and a must try! Even if you don’t get it quite right, which I’m sure some may say I did not, it is still delicious, healthy, homemade bread! Eat up!