So last week marked an event between University College Birmingham, Birmingham City University and Aston University for #BrumGoesGreen2019 which had students looking at more sustainable ways of living in Birmingham.
Within the Bakery department at UCB we looked at other ways of using bread that is left over at the end of the day. There are of course well known methods to do this such as making bread pudding however we heard about something new that is being done GAIL’s Bakery through a story by British Baker last year where bread is made into a porridge with water and then added to a new bread dough. We thought this sounded really interesting and decided to experiment in order to look at new ways of being sustainable.
The results were really good so we thought we would share for others interest. The old bread was used at 30% on flour weight, however we believe that this could be used at a much higher ratio as long as the flour is strong enough to hold it. Picture below of the whole process from old bread to finished product. We also added a new stencil to it and dusted with spinach powder. The flavour was more intense than a standard loaf. Although the experiment was successful, we also accept that this may not be feasible for larger bakeries due to the traceability issues that this raises. After-all, it would be challenging for bakeries track which stale bread loaves were used in each new batch of recycled bread. Food for thought though! Comments welcome!