Baking – Can you make bread with the yeast in beer

bakingbeerbreadfermentationyeast

I am looking to make some beer bread by substituting beer for water in some of my favorite recipes. I have heard that beer has yeast though, so I was wondering if the yeast in beer would work to ferment & proof my bread.

I was wondering if there is enough for say, an overnight rise without adding any extra yeast, or should I still use the full amount of yeast in each recipe that I use without the beer?

Best Answer

I don't believe you would want to try to leaven bread with beer only, though you could certainly use it as a flavoring.

First, the amount of yeast still present in a brewed batch of beer is very low. Beers that have been bottle carbonated (or bottle conditioned) will have more than others but, particularly with high gravity beers (beers with a lot of alcohol), a lot of the yeast has died due to the alcohol content or been removed by the manufacturer to clarify the brew (yeasts make beer cloudy).

Plus, beer yeast and bread yeast are very different things:

From the info here:

Different strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae produce different proportions of carbon dioxide and alcohol. Baker's yeast is a blend of several strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chosen for their flavor and ability to make carbon dioxide, which causes bread to rise. Brewer's yeast is made of strains chosen for their alcohol-producing ability and tends to have a bitter flavor. Brewer's yeast is considered an inactive yeast while baker's yeast is an active yeast. In an active yeast the yeast cells are still alive, whereas they are killed in the process of making inactive yeasts, like brewer's yeast.

Brewer's yeast is used to brew homemade wines and beers, while baker's yeast makes bread rise. You can't brew alcohol with baker's yeast and you can't leaven bread with brewer's yeast.

Related Topic