[gmac]

I'm making a starter and it smells awesome and I just wondered if anyone has ever tried baking bread (I was thinking pizza dough) using brewers yeast?  Might be a waste of time but I could see adding actively fermenting beer to a pizza dough recipe and it being pretty tasty.

As an aside, I was making sweet potatoes on the weekend and we didn't have any brown sugar (I was surprised).  i usually mash them with brown sugar and butter.  Anyway, I used DME instead it it was really good.  Going to be doing that again for sure!

[pete b]

Hmm. Hmmm! Huh! Using a starter to get enough Co2? Hmmm. Pizza or flatbread is probably the way to go. Throw in some spent grains? Hmm!

[sambates]

I used munton's before and it didn't taste must different than with baking yeast. I assume S-04 or S-33 would throw some interesting flavors, but why spend that money for pizza dough? I'd be interested to hear results though. On a side note, I always use spent grain in my dough and it turns out awesome!

[pete b]

A flat bread or pizza comes to mind because brewers yeast produces more alcohol than co2 vis a vis bread dough so rising might be a problem.

[gmac]

I wasn't thinking of just the yeast.  I'm making a kolsch soon and I would think using a cup of actively fermenting beer in place of water would give the dough some sweetness, bit of maltiness and of course, some CO2.  I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

[Jimmy K]

Cool idea. They're both S. cerviseae so I think it would work fine. Whether there is enough, or too much, yeast in a cup of fermenting beer is another question. My guess is that you'll be in the ballpark. Pizza crust would be pretty forgiving anyway.

[josephbauer]

I have used half a pack of Danstar Windsor Ale yest and had great tasting pizza.

[euge]

I think you'd be happier just using beer as the liquid component along with active dry yeast. That way you get the best of both worlds.

[denny]

I think you'd be happier just using beer as the liquid component along with active dry yeast. That way you get the best of both worlds.

I agree.  The couple times I've tried using brewers yeast for baking it worked, but not well.  I'm told it'd because brewing yeast is optimized for fermentation and baking yeast is optimized for CO2 production.