What to do with juice pulp? Make bread.

Since I got my juicer, I've been working on ways to use the pulp left over from juicing. I've given it to the goats, to the chickens, put it on the compost pile, stirred it into vanilla yogurt (as long as it's more fruit-based), and sometimes just tossed it (I always put it in the fridge with the best of intentions, but sometimes it just doesn't get used.)

So today I did some research to find out what other bloggers do with their leftover pulp. I found Plan To Eat's post about 101 Ways to Use Juicer Pulp (Okay, Actually Just Ten) and decided to try the recipe for Whole Wheat Fruit/Veggie Pulp Bread which is actually originally from Food.com.

First, I juiced some stuff: a Macintosh apple, a navel orange, quarter of a lemon, about a half a cup of blueberries (have I said lately how much I absolutely adore blueberries?), a knob of ginger, some alfalfa sprouts (don't tell J or A I put those in there), about a cup of pineapple (fresh, please!) and about a cup of carrots. Here's how the juice looked (and it tasted even better than it looked!)

After I drank the juice, I scooped the pulp out of the juicer and into a bowl. It looked like nowhere near as pretty as the juice, but oh well. It still tastes good (I have been known to just eat the pulp with a spoon right after juicing, but today I didn't.)

Then I pulled together all the ingredients called for in the recipe above, except I swapped out Kamut flour for the whole wheat flour. I did this because I am an extremely virtuous foodie/hippie, and I love the idea of using Kamut. (Ok, I also did it because I had some of the stuff on hand and was out of whole wheat flour, so sue me.)

I am sure my friend Mark Scarborough would be proud of me, (Mark and Bruce Weinstein are the Kings of Grains, among other things.) Their cookbook Grain Mains is what got me started buying such oddities as Kamut and Teff and so on. But enough digression.

So I mixed the pulp into the rest of the recipe (using eggs from our very own Buckeye hens, what else?) and added some chopped pecans (I do not care for walnuts in my quick breads, nope) and raisins.

Popped it into the oven for about 50 minutes (it was ever so slightly undercooked, probably should have gone five more minutes) and went off to do other things. The finished loaf looked very dark (likely those blubberies adding color), and was left to cool a bit before cutting.

The finished product was really rather good. A little plain, could have used some more spice, perhaps more ginger or cinnamon, not sure which I'll add next time. But a really good use of the pulp, and now I won't feel so guilty about tossing it in the compost, but will make a loaf of this instead! I don't juice every day, but for those days I do, this will make a nice compliment to the juice itself, and use the pulp up nicely.