Beer Bread

Difficulty Rating:

Recipe:

3 cups Self-Rising Flour
2 tbsp sugar
1-2 cans/bottles of beer
1 egg, beaten with 1 tsp of water

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Slowly add the beer until the dough reaches a sticky, solid consistency. Press into a greased breadpan and cover with a towel. Let sit for 15 mins.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Brush egg mixture onto the top of the dough. Bake 1 hour.
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Execution:

This is, by far, the easiest thing in the world to do. Most breads require buying yeast, and careful measurements, and waiting for it to rise, and kneading, and a whole lot of work that's just a pain. Not so with Beer Bread - the beer has the yeast built right in, so there's none of that pesky manual labor.

You can use any beer, really. I find myself experimenting with flavors. Cherry Wheat beer makes a nice fruity bread that's good by itself with butter - throw in some actual chopped cherries and life is awesome. Since I'm making this to go with tomato soup, I chose a Summer Ale since it's light and slightly citrusy. It doesn't really matter what you choose; you can make this with the Silver Bullet if that's what you have in your fridge.

Ingredients:

This is made with basically nothing. You start with Self-Rising Flour (if you only have All-Purpose flour, which is what's usually sold in stores, you can turn it into SR Flour like so).

Keep in mind that when you're measuring flour, you should never pack it into the measuring cup - don't shake it to get it to settle, don't flatten it in there with a spoon. Just scoop it in there until you get to the top. There should be some air in there - packing it will throw off the measurements. It's not enough to panic over so don't go crazy with it, just scoop it in there and dump it in the bowl.

Add two tablespoons of sugar, which is just two big scoops with a large spoon. Mix it up. Then slowly pour in your beer a little at a time. It'll fizz like the dickens, but that's to be expected. Just mix it into the flour bit by bit until it gets doughy. How much beer you use really depends on the individual beer. I always get two bottles just in case. For the Cherry Wheat, it takes about 1 1/4 bottles; for the Summer Ale, it didn't even take one full bottle. It should have a sticky, solid consistency.

This is actually a little too wet for the dough, but this is my first foray into photography while cooking so things are a bit jumbled. If it gets too wet like this, just mix in some more flour a spoonful at a time until you get it right.

Then just pour it into a greased bread pan. Throw a towel over it and let it sit for 15 minutes. Depending on what beer you use, it should rise a bit. Heavier beers generally mean less rise and thicker bread. I have a hankering to try this with Guinness since that's basically bread-in-a-bottle anyway, but I haven't yet made that leap.

Then just brush the egg over it and stick that bad boy in the oven.

375 for an hour, and voila! You've got delicious crusty bread!

As a general rule, get the bread out of the pan as soon as you can and let it cool. The grease should keep it from sticking and it'll come right out when you tip it over.

The crust should be pretty thick, which makes it perfect to eat with soups. Enjoy!

Special Thanks to Casey C. for the original recipe!