A question for the yeast bakers among us ........

Has anyone ever made a bread using beer in place of all or part of the yeast and water in a more traditional dough formula?

I'm actually thinking of doing some experiments with grilled pizza andwas thinking the yeasty/hopsy beer flavor would stand up well to the char and smoke flavor of grilled pizza. That said, I've never heard of beer bread.

3 ingredients, throw them together and bara bing....

http://www.cooksrecipes.com/bread/beer-bread-recipe.html

I have to try this like tonight!

Actually, I googled and found several recipes. But they all have in common either self rising flour or baking powder (essentially the same thing). I can't see how that would work for a pizza. But I may try it as bread forst and see what happens.

Dough too soupy?

At least it seems it would be. Chemically leavened doughs are all much more tender that yeast raised doughs.

There's a new pizza place up the street that has a line down the block every night, running out of dough by 7 p.m.! Reviewers say that success is due to the dough being fermented. Ever heard of fermented pizza dough before?

It is the process of fermentation that causes bread dough to rise (I'm speaking of yeasted dough here. Chemically risen dough is something else - this would be like quick breads, batter breads, biscuits, etc.)

There is an exzymatic process that breaks down flour into sevaral sugars. Yeast feed on these sugars. Their metabolic process causes them to release carbon dioxide (along with a bit of alcohol and some other by-products), which get trapped by the gluten strands in the bread dough, creating those little (or big) holes that you see that give bread their texture. Because the gluen strands are elastic, the carbon dixoide causes them to stretch and trap the carbon dizide, which gives bread dough its rise. Fermentation is basically yeast metabolism. It's the by-products of fermentation that give bread its flavor. That's why the slower/longer the fermentation/rise time you give your bread dough, the more flavor it develops - simply because it has longer to work.

There may be something "special" in the fermentation process of the pizza dough - they may use a sponge, biga, some old dough, natural leavening, low temps and a long, slow rise or something that gives their dough a unique flavor and/or texture.

Give it a try if you get a chance. I'm curious as to what's different about it.

but, while yeast are used to ferment both beer and wine, there is no live yeast left in bottled beer. It will give you flavor but no rise. the acidic environment created by the fermentation process eventually kills all the yeast.

I've heard of people making bread from the "spent grains" of beer production, but there's little nutrition left in those grains and a bread yeast is still needed.

leavened dough for grilled pizzas. Since yeast in beer is nonexistent and since the alcohol will kill any added yeast, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree ... or hops plant .... in my thinking?

Okay, I went and dug through several of my bread books to see what I could find for you, and I did find a few recipes for yeasted bread that used beer. They called for either flat beer that had sit out at room temp for several hours or they warmed it to cook off the alcohol, then cooled it back down to room temp. These recipes were all for heavy dark breads, except one which was a yeasted beer cheese bread.

My suggestion - "try it!" Just substitute the liquid in your recipe with some flat beer and see how it turns out. You could try first making a small loaf so see how the flavor turns out before experimenting with it as pizza shells.

I'd suggest a flavorful ale in order to bring the flavor through.

:toast:

pizza dough. The whole point of the beer is simply a flavor enhancer.

and I seem to recall it being a quick bread with herbs. I'll look up the recipe later.

but the texture is completely different from using yeast. The bread is very heavy, dense and chewy, and the flavor of the hops pretty much gets lost, leaving an incredibly sweet bread.

If you want to do this and get a reasonable bread texture, perhaps substituting some or all of the liquid with non alcoholic beer might do the trick. I don't recommed using alcoholic beer because the alcohol is toxic to yeast, and you'd defeat the purpose of using it in the first place.

Ersatz beer! Perfect. All the flavor. None of the alcohol!