Grits Bread or What To Do with Leftover Grits

I’ve had this bread pinned for quite a while and finally made it. It is wonderful! Such nice dough and it was perfect even though my grits had cheddar, sautéed peppers and a tiny bit of Canadian bacon.

Chef and Reader Carlin B

Why Grits in Bread?

For the same reason I use potatoes in bread: for the swelled up starches in the grits.

The starches swell through cooking in water, and the water slowly penetrates the hard little bits of corn, gelatinizing the starches in them.

When grits cool off, do they turn back into dry coarse crumbs?

Nope. They cool into sort of a gummy, cold slab of a bunch of starch that is holding onto water even once cool.

And those cooked grits will keep holding onto that water, even when baked into bread.

This slows down the staling process and increases the keeping ability of bread.

I’ve made this loaf many times now, and I kept a couple of pieces out of one loaf to see how long it would stay soft, and the bread got moldy long before it staled. Nice!

Grits Bread Q&A

About the Video

Note the video is a real-time video in which I make and knead the bread dough live.

It is about 50 minutes long. If you do not want to watch the entire thing, you can click over and watch it on Facebook. There you will be able to fast forward to get to the parts you are most interested in.

Please, especially if you do not bake a lot of yeast breads, take the time to watch the kneading in particular. You will be able to see how the dough changes and gains structure as it is kneaded.

Watching it in real time will help you resist the urge to add additional flour to your dough while it’s in the mixer. And we don’t want that.

Adding too much extra flour can lead to a dense loaf that doesn’t rise as much as it should.

What My Testers Said

I don’t often ask other folks to test my recipes. I generally do all the testing myself. But I think I am onto something pretty special here, and I wanted to make sure that other folks who don’t bake a lot of bread would have success with this recipe.

I asked two cookbook author friends, Nancie McDermott and Jill O’Connor to give the bread a try and see what they thought.

Here’s a photo of Nancie’s bread:

And here’s what she said about it:

It is delicious and a lovely texture. A great, wonderful, doable recipe.

Nancie McDermott

And here is how Jill’s bread turned out:

And this is what Jill had to say about the recipe:

This Southern California girl didn’t know grits from granola until Jenni Field introduced me to this super simple recipe for a delightful loaf of bread. The grits give the dough a great texture and a dollop of honey adds a whisper of sweetness. Even when sliced, the bread stays fresh and tender for days. A definite winner, even for beginning bakers.

Jill O’Connor

I was thrilled with their reactions, and I am sure you will find this bread easy to make and really delicious as well!

Another Reader Rave

Wonderful , moist, Tasty , EASY to make Bread!! OUR favorite bread In our weekly rotation! We have shared a slice with friends and neighbors and THEy LOVED it! TRY it YOU will LOVE it TOO. I used polenta initially I really liked the bread with polenta but have used grits, as well. Since we eat Polenta more than grits here I use polenta to make the bread generally. Jenni has WONDERFUL videos and will answer questions. I enjoy many recipes and videos! Thank You Jenni!

Reader Athena

Ingredients

NOTE: The full recipe is at the bottom of the post. This section is just letting you know what you’ll need to make the bread.

The players:

• leftover cooked stone-ground grits (and yes, you can cook some special just for this recipe. Just let them cool before adding them to the mixer bowl. And cold out of the fridge is fine too.) NOTE ABOUT GRITS MEASUREMENT: measure your cup of cooked grits once they’ve cooled down. If you weigh them, you will need 10 oz cooked grits. Otherwise, measure a full cup of cooked then cooled grits
• salt
• bacon fat
• honey
• whole milk
• flour–either all purpose or bread flour will work here
• yeast–I use instant, but you can dissolve active dry yeast in some of the milk and use that instead

Ingredient Substitutions

• You can use either white or yellow stone ground grits. I use yellow, because the little specks show up. Either will work just fine though.
• I use kosher salt, but if all you have is fine table salt, you can use it. You will probably only need a teaspoon and 1/4-1/2 rather than the 2 teaspoons of kosher salt called for.
• Instead of bacon fat, feel free to use very soft butter, soft coconut oil or even olive oil if you like. It will change the character of the bread slightly, but any of these substitutions will work just fine. Oh, and I’ve also used the fat from cooking sausage too, and that’s really good!
• You can use sorghum syrup instead of honey. Maple syrup is also a good option. I think that would be especially nice if you use sausage fat as the fat in the recipe.
• You can substitute 2% milk for the whole milk. You can also use buttermilk, but since it is thicker, if you do use it, you will probably need to add an additional tablespoon or two of water or milk.
• I have not tried to make this bread with whole wheat flour, but I’ve tested with both bread flour and all purpose flour with great results. Do not use a lower protein flour like White Lily or cake flour. It doesn’t have a high enough protein content to work here.
• I used instant yeast, but you can also use active dry. Note if you have less than the 1 1/2 teaspoons called for, you can use less. Your rise time will be longer, but what you lose in time, you gain in additional flavor.

Measuring the Grits

I have had a couple of people tell me that their dough has not come together and they had to add a whole bunch of extra flour to make their dough workable.

So this doesn’t happen to you, I want to reiterate how to measure the grits.

1. Bring 4 cups water plus a teaspoon or so of salt to a boil.
2. Stream in 1 full level cup of stone-ground grits.
3. Stir and cook until tender, about 30-40 minutes.
4. Eat some grits now if you want.
5. Cool down the remaining grits and chill them in the fridge.
6. Weigh out 10 oz of the cooled, cooked grits. If you don’t have a kitchen scale (please get one), measure out 1 full dry measuring cup of cooled cooked grits.

Procedure

This bread is made using the straight dough method.

That means everyone goes in the pool at the same time.

The one “rule” I have about it is to keep the salt and the yeast away from each other until the mixing begins.

That’s because high concentrations of salt can kill yeast. Just to clarify–not dry salt, but still.

So I keep the flour between them until I start mixing.

If you add everything to your mixer in the order I suggest, all will be well.

What Is the Crumb Like?

In a word, excellent. This bread has a fairly tight crumb but is also light and chewy. If you look closely, you can see the little specks of cooked grits in the finished bread, too.

Serving Suggestions

Honestly, any way you’d use store-bought bread, you can use this bread.

Here are some things I’ve made with it so far:

• peanut butter and jelly using peach plum jam (or mixed berry jam)
• ham and cheese
• grilled cheese
• bologna and cheese
• toast with butter and jam
• bread, butter, and sugar sandwich
• fresh and un-toasted with butter
• buns for sandwiches and burgers
• make a fancy BLT
• toast it and spread it with bacon jam, tomato jam, or both!

I will say that this bread makes gorgeous toast, so if you have a loaf of this and a loaf of some other bread and are trying to decide which one to make toast with, choose the grits bread.

I mean, just look how perfect!

The Kind of Flour Matters

I recently had a reader comment that her grits bread dough needed a full 1/2 cup extra of milk.

She was using a combination of white and whole wheat flour but said she followed the recipe to the T, otherwise, including weighing her ingredients.

You can use whatever higher-protein flour or mix of flours you’d like, but do know that the amount of liquid may change accordingly depending on how much liquid your flour can absorb.

Once she added the extra liquid, all was well and her bread turned out fine.

Yours will too!

Here’s her complete comment, and I’m adding this section to the post so it can help everyone:

I made this bread yesterday but i had an issue I haven’t seen in posts.

I followed the recipe completely, weighing each ingredient. However when it came to mixing, the dough was so dry it wouldn’t come together at all.

I ended up adding nearly another 1/2 cup of milk to finally make a nice dough ball.

It turned out fantastic, and I’m going to need to make another loaf very soon.

I did do 50% white whole wheat that I keep refrigerated along with regular AP flour. Could that have been my issue?

I’d appreciate any thoughts you have. Thanks for the great recipe.

Reader Kathy

Do You Have More Bread Recipes?

As a matter of fact, I do!

I love making bread and playing with the Tangzhong method to create breads that stay soft for days like my Tangzhong pain au lait or milk bread recipe.

I also have a great recipe for potato sandwich bread that is just as soft as this bread is. It also makes beautiful toast.

And if you are having difficulty finding baking yeast, I also have a few breads that I make with yeast used for making beer or wine. You may want to check out my posts on baking with brewers’ yeast, champagne yeast pita, and champagne yeast brioche.

A Note About Measurements

NOTE: Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids.

Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency.

This is the scale I use, love, and recommend is the Escali Primo.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this or any other recipe or post on the site, there are a few ways to get in touch.

You can leave a comment on the post, and I’ll be back in touch within 24 hours.

If your question is more pressing, don’t hesitate to email me, and I should be back in touch within 4 hours (unless I’m asleep) or often much more quickly than that.

I hope you’ve learned something from this post or that you’ve decided to make the recipe.

It would really help me and other readers out if you’d rate the recipe using the star ratings in the recipe card.

It’s also very helpful to me and to other readers if you leave a comment and/or a recipe review.

Thank you so much for being here and for helping others find my recipes by sharing on your social platforms!