Here in Franconia, bread has a long tradition, nonetheless, bread offcuts are one of the most frequent waste products in restaurants. To counteract this, we made it our task to create a strong flavor component from the leftover bread.

Using this bread extract, we managed to make this aromatic not only accessible for refining savory sauces, but also for use in desserts.

Preparation:

Cut the bread into rough cubes, spread onto a baking sheet and roast in a fan-assisted oven at 160 °C for around 12 minutes until it is light brown. Then leave the bread to cool, place in a large bowl, pour over the alcohol and cover, leave to marinate for 7 days in the refrigerator extract the taste of the bread into the alcohol. Strain this mixture in three steps: Pour it through a coarse strainer first and allow it to drip without squeezing the liquid out of the bread. Then pass through a fine strainer and finally leave the “bread alcohol” to pass through a cloth strainer.

Place the bread alcohol in the evaporator flask and start the evaporation with 60 °C heating bath, 3 °C cooling and 200 mbar. Then reduce the pressure slowly to 40 mbar and distill until a bread extract has developed. The bread extract can be used not only to flavor a basic ice-cream mixture but also to refine sauces.

P.S.: As a fundamental principle, the final (re)distillate should be lowered to maximum the alcohol concentration of the initial distillate before being used. For one thing, to be as safe as possible in terms of legal uncertainties, and for another, because it brings you significantly closer to the optimum drinking strength.

In most cases, we bring our distillates to 40% by volume, except when the initial product is lower in alcohol content or for aromatic purposes we would like to work in a different range.