If you make your own tofu and bake your own bread, you can merge the two activities and improve the quality of your bread loaves.
What is okara?
Okara is the bean pulp left behind when you filter pureed soybeans during the production of soy milk. When you make tofu, you end up with a lot of okara, because the first step is to make a big batch of soy milk.
Our method of making tofu produces about a cup and a half of okara for each block.
What can I do with it?
Okara may at first seem like a "waste" product of tofu production, but it actually has many uses. When we make tofu now, we look forward to using the okara as much as the tofu itself. If you search the Internet for okara recipes, you'll be amazed at the variety of dishes you can create with it.
Keep in mind that okara is just soy bean pulp, so it is easy to come up with ways to use it. You can use it as a thickener and a binder in place of non-vegan alternatives like milk and eggs. It mixes well with other ingredients to produce meatless patties and nuggets. Spiced and dried, it can even be used as a substitute for grated hard cheese products like parmesan. It never goes to waste in our house.
How do I use it for bread?
One of our favorite uses for okara is as a dough conditioner for our artisan and sandwich breads. Okara gives you the binding effect of eggs. It has little flavor, so it doesn't compete with other ingredients in the dough. It helps produce a softer, moister, and less-crumbly crumb, and at the same time, a stronger, crispier crust.
It doesn't take much. In a typical batch of bread dough using 3 1/2 to 4 cups of flour, you'll only need about a quarter cup of okara. Depending upon how well drained it is, you may also need to reduce the amount of water you add to the dough mixture. Our okara is usually pretty wet (about the consistency of pudding), and we reduce the amount of water in the recipe by 1/8 cup.
What happens if I use too much?
You can add more than just a 1/4 cup of okara and get different effects on your bread. The first time we tried using okara, we used 1/2 cup and created a loaf that was reminiscent of an "English muffin" style bread loaf. It was a little too dense and chewy for our taste, but not bad overall.
The upper limit on how much okara you could use would be similar to any other non-gluten ingredient. The more you use, the more you interfere with the dough's ability to rise. You can offset this effect to a point by adding vital wheat gluten.
Where can I get a recipe to try it?
We posted one of our favorite bread recipes on our recipe site ManyVeggieRecipes.com. Read our Sunflower Seed Bread recipe for an example of using okara in bread dough.
The next time you make a batch of tofu, be sure to save aside some of that okara for your next loaf of bread. You may never bake bread again without it.