Spent Grain No-Knead Pizza Dough

As many others have noted before, brewing is really just another type of cooking.  During our time off from everyday life last week thanks to Thundersnow 2011, I had a chance to make something I’ve read about and thought about concocting for some time: pizza dough made with grain that had previously been mashed.

My wife DeAunn and I love food and love to cook even more; pizza is something that we make fairly regularly.  After working at a by-the-slice gourmet pizza joint in undergrad, I became a pretty intractable pizza snob; I still find myself critiquing dough at various and sundry pizza parlours on its balance of crisp bite, soft inner texture, yeasty breadiness, and hint of sweetness.  I used to experiment quite a bit with making them myself, but more recently, being pretty busy/lazy, we’ve settled on the tasty whole wheat doughs from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

I was inspired to get back into making dough when I came across a dough recipe incorporating post-mash grain posted by Morebeer forum member Alewife.  The other source for this dough was a no-knead recipe from Ideas in Food by Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot; I’d never done no-knead, and being stuck inside due to the snow, I had plenty of time to let it rise.  The grain came from my recent altbier.

DeAunn assembled one of our favourite pizzas on this crust: a no-marinara pie with mozzarella, cheddar, tomatoes, onions, and mushrooms, topped with a barbecue sauce lacing.  While the dough could’ve used a bit more time to cook through, it was highly enjoyable (and repeatable).



for 1 dough:

2 cups        Whole wheat flour
1 cup          Spent grain
.5 tbsp        Sea salt
.5 tbsp        Sugar
.25 tsp        Active dry yeast
1.5 cups     Water

Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl; mix well to thoroughly blend in the yeast.  Combine spent grain and 1/2 cup water in food processor; process until it all gets pretty gooey.  Add spent grain mixture to the flour mixture along with the remaining cup of water; mix with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until the water is absorbed and there are no lumps.  Cover the dough and let sit at room temperature for 4 hours; dough will rise to half again its original volume.

Loosen the dough from the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Slide a damp hand under one side of the dough, and fold the dough into the center.  Fold the dough this way on 4 sides, then flip over the whole dough so the folds are now on the bottom.  Cover the dough and let sit at room temperature for 3-4 hours; dough will double.

(It still looked a bit wet after sitting for a while, so I dusted on some extra wheat flour.  Some it absorbed, some just sat dry on top of the dough.  I might keep the faith a little better next time and go without this extra step.)