Easy Beer Bread

I’m not a baker.
I keep saying that. It’s a mantra in my life.

It isn’t to say I don’t bake. I make biscotti. I make cookies. I make cornbread.

But there’s a science to baking that I don’t really get. It isn’t just the fact that I don’t get that science, most of you know that I’m a diabetic. I can’t really do a lot of experimenting. Patricia can’t eat that much of it just while we train for the marathon, and like I just said, I can’t eat that much either.

It is the stuff like ‘Mix the yeast into slightly warm water.’ That means a lot of things to a lot of people. Like me? I love me a hot, hot shower. We’re talking water that the wife can’t stand. ‘slightly warm’ to me, might be hot to you.

And don’t get me started on ‘room temperature.’

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago, we received a cookbook in the mail. The cookbook (this one in particular) and I have some issues, namely in their choice of typeface.

It wasn’t used very sparingly. It was the entire book.

It makes for very, very difficult reading.

Which is a shame, because as I struggled to get through some of the recipes, I realized that they weren’t half bad.

In fact, this particular recipe caught my eye. It’s a bread, so it was a little scary for me, but it was easy.

Beer Batter Bread from At Our Table

• Bread flour, 2 cups
• Whole wheat flour, 1 cup
• Brown sugar, 1/4 cup
• Baking powder, 1 tablespoon
• Sea salt, 1 teaspoon
• Beer, 12 ounces, room temperature and not flat
• Butter, 1/2 cup, melted

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Coat a 5×9 bread loaf pan with butter. Just the inside, of course.
3. In a medium bowl, stir together the dry ingredients with a whisk.
4. Dump the beer to the bowl and mix until combined. It will be lumpy. And don’t try to pour the beer like you would, you know, pour beer into a glass. Just let it glug out. That foam is your yeast springing into action.
5. “Pour” the batter into the bread pan. You’ll likely need to use a spatula to help it get out and to spread the dough in the pan.
6. Drizzle the melted butter on top of the loaf.
7. Bake for 35-40 minutes until a cake tester/toothpick/knife/bamboo kebab stake comes out clean.

Notes: We used a porter in this bread and I thought it was fantastic, but I want to try other beers to see how much taste the beer imparts to the bread. Not only that, but I had to add about 3 more ounces of beer because the mixture was just a little too dry.

Instead of whole wheat flour, we used emmer flour, which likely was why it was too dry.

When you’re pouring the dough into the pan, don’t be worried if it doesn’t look too deep. When I poured it out, it barely reached an inch up the pan, but ballooned into the beautiful loaf you see above upon baking.

As for taste, this was a fantastic bread. You get just a hint of the porter flavor, but mainly, what you get is a sweet and savory loaf. It’s sweet enough that smearing it with butter and honey and throwing it under the broiler for 2 minutes makes for a stellar breakfast and savory enough that it even works for a grilled cheese with some Mt. Townsend Cheese Curds. Of course, we also highly recommend just eating a slice plain. Unlike a lot of breads, this bread is very moist, and won’t really crumble when you slice it. We’ll be using this base recipe and experimenting (yeah, I know we said we couldn’t do a lot of it, but every couple of weeks will be fine) all summer.

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Tagged as: Baking, Beer Bread, Bread