Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I have been on a bread kick of late.  For reasons unknown, I have always thought making bread was a neat.  I think it is the same spirit as making your own beer.  However, I knew next to nothing about it.  Then I heard about the Breadtopia website on a Basic Brewing Podcast (http://www.breadtopia.com) and I was hooked.  The site presents some very easy to learn videos to get you started making great bread.  Since then, I have bought some books and been turning out a lot of bread "experiments" (much to my wife's joy and chagrin - she loves bread and it is a diet killer).  These include sourdough breads, which I have yet to get to work right - they taste great but don't rise much at all.

Anyway, I was reading the blog of Peter Reinhart, a noted bread instructor of a large culinary school, and he mentioned "spent grain bread."  I had never heard of this, but you basically take spent grains from the brewing process (for all grain brewers), dry them, and grind them into flour.  Because most of the sugars from the grains is used, you only make a portion of your dough with the grains (not a lot for the yeast to work on).  But they supposedly make great dense bread.  I really want to try doing this and will probably save some of the grains from my next batch.

Here is the recipe I will try - http://g_a_b_s.tripod.com/gabscookbook.html

If you'd like to borrow a Reinhart book or two just let me know. I've got The Bread Baker's Apprentice and American Pie which is all about pizza and the other book pretty much speaks for itself. Good stuff and great breads. I haven't tried spent bread--crystal and Maris Otter sound like nice additions. Thanks for the links, i'll check 'em out.