Can I use the juice from pickles to make bread?
I finished a jar of pickles the other day and was trying to figure out what to do with the half a jar of pickle juice that was left behind so I didn't have to just pour it down the drain. I thought maybe you could use it instead of water to make bread with a pickle flavor to it. I thought it may be good for sandwiches where you're normally add pickles, or even for cheeseburger pizza crust. So, is this a completely horrible idea (like my wife thinks), or could it work?
Best Answer
You don't have to use water as the liquid in your bread. Enriched breads use milk and/or eggs. We have recently had questions about breads which use orange juice.
On the technical side, you have to adjust recipe a little. Pickle juice doesn't have much dissolved solids, so no need to adjust for that. However, it is very salty, so you should reduce or completely leave out the salt. The acidity will help with gluten development and also with breaking down the starches in flour to make them available for chemical reactions which produce more flavour, so this is a good thing to have. However, yeast itself has some strong pH preferences. It grows best in a slightly acidic environment, but if the dough gets too basic or too sour, it will slow down or not grow at all. I think that the diluted vinegar in the pickle water won't oversour the dough, but it would be a good idea to make the poolish with pure water and only add pickle water for the dough itself.
As for taste, I can't say that much without ever having tried it, but my intuition says that you will get a whiff of pickles, but not a full-blown taste. After all, bread made with orange juice doesn't taste like biting into an orange. I think you will notice the difference, but you will still have to add pickles to your sandwiches for taste (and they are needed for the crunch anyway). As for horrible, it depends entirely on personal taste. I am not a fan of pickles or soured breads, and wouldn't eat it. There are people who drink the pickle water from the jar; I think they will enjoy the pickle-smelling bread too. If you are a pickle fan, I think it is worth a try, if it doesn't work, you only throw out under a dollar's worth of ingredients.
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Can I do anything with pickle juice?
Use it in place of vinegar in gazpacho (or anything, really). If your fish or veggies need a lift, drizzle a bit of the brine over them. Put some pucker into your Michelada or Bloody Mary with a tablespoon of pickle juice. Elevate ho-hum hummus to something more punchy with a few dashes of the stuff.Can you reuse the pickle juice?
You might think reusing pickle juice is on the extreme end of reducing food waste, but here's the thing: you're not just saving the juice! Pickling is a good way to use up veggies that are starting to wilt, giving them a second (and delicious) life instead of tossing them.What can I use bread and butter pickle juice for?
Great for tenderizing meat. Use it as a marinade for Pork Chops or Steak. Gives great flavor to potatoes or chicken by boiling in pickle juice instead of water! Add a little extra flavor to your favorite BBQ sauce!Is pickle juice the same as brine?
Is Pickle Juice the same as pickle brine? No. Whilst the base of both pickle brine and Pickle Juice is vinegar, that is where the similarity ends. Pickle brine contains sugar, protein and other nasty items which are not helpful for athletes.Use leftover pickle juice to make amazing bread
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Answer 2
King Arthur Flour posted a rye bread recipe a while back. I didn't like it as it was too pickley tasting. But it uses pickle juice. Might be worth trying.
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