Showing posts with label hens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hens. Show all posts

Monday, June 20, 2011

Beer Bread


My husband brews our own beer. It's amazing. After he's done, we have a bunch of spent grain left. Usually we give it to our hens to eat but recently I've been making bread out of it.



3 cups wet spent grains
1.5 cups warm water
1 tablespoon bakers yeast
1/3 cup brown sugar
3-5 cups flour

Mix yeast, sugar and warm water together. Allow yeast to bloom. In a large mixing bowl, add grains and yeast mixture. Using a mixer or your hands, start adding flour until dough is no longer sticky. Place in large, greased bowl, cover with a towel and allow it to double in size- approximately an hour. Punch down dough and place in two greased loaf pans, allow to double in size again. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes until brown and knife comes out clean when inserted in the middle.


A picture of the spent grains ready for baking.


Here, I didn't split the dough into two loaves but rather baked it as one large loaf on my pizza stone. It was much crunchier and would makes a great addition to a meal. But I prefer it in the two loaves. It's softier and is a good sandwich bread. Enjoy!


Our hens enjoying their spent grains.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Eugene Celebration

Chickens and Meter Cozies??


This weekend Eugene had their annual Eugene Celebration. What does that mean to me? Well, this year my family (and my hens!) walked in the parade Saturday morning. We walked with the Eugene Friendly Neighborhood Farmers in conjunction with The Backyard Farmer. We are trying to raise awareness of urban farming and backyard hens. Also Eugene recently suspended their two hen limit. So we marched in support. I knitted the boys cute chicken hats and we pulled the gals- Ramona, Fanny and Popcorn in a wagon.


About 30 of us farmers showed up with 25 chickens. It was a lot of fun!


This past week also coincided with my knitting group's one year anniversary. We decided to yarn bomb parking meters by knitting them cozies. I contributed two cozies. A rainbow fish cozy (which I installed on the meter directly in front of a sushi restaurant!) and a Pac Man cozy.

You can read more about it at the Knitting is Knotty blog and you can see more pictures on our flickr page.