La vie est belle

While flipping through my baking book, I came across a bread recipe that seems pretty easy to put together. It’s called beer bread.  By easy I mean really easy. It can be simply made with flour, beer, sugar, baking powder and butter!  No need to wait for the dough to rise! Simply mix all the ingredients together, place on a baking tray and bake.  The flavour variations can be changed by simply adding whatever you desire to the basic dry mix.

Within minutes of putting the bread in the oven, the kitchen smelled fabulous. Beer bread is dense. You can taste the beer a little but it’s not bitter. Spread some margarine or cream cheese on top of it and it’s good to go! This is by far the most easy bread to make! Next time I will increase the salt and vary the flavours.

Get the recipe for a basic beer bread, read some tips and read how you can vary the flavours

Ingredients

• 405g (3 and 1/4  cups) plain all purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp Salt
• 50g butter, chopped
• 375 ml (1 and 1/2 cups) Beer — I used Tiger beer

Method

Sift the flour.

Process the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a food processor until crumbly. If you do not have a food processor, just mix them together.

Add the beer and process in bursts to form a soft sticky dough.

Preheat oven to 210 C.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead until smooth, adding extra flour if needed.

Divide the dough into balls, place on greased oven tray and flatten a little bit.

Brush with a little water and slash the tops with a knife.

Bake for 10 mins.

Reduce oven to 180C.

Bake for another 10 mins or until cooked.

Cool and serve with butter or cream cheese.

A few tips and flavour variations that I found on the net regarding the beer bread

• When mixing the batter, mix only until the ingredients are moistened, do not over mix as this will cause your bread to rise un-evenly or not at all.
• Sifting flour for bread recipes is a must-do. Most people just scoop the 1 cup measure in the flour canister and level it off. That compacts the flour and will turn your bread into a “hard biscuit” as some have described. That’s because they aren’t sifting their flour! If you do not have a sifter, use a spoon to spoon the flour into the 1 cup measure. Try it once the “correct” way and you will see an amazing difference in the end product.

For flavour variations

Garlic & Herb: Add 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried thyme, and 2 minced garlic cloves (or 1 teaspoon garlic flakes) to the basic mix. For fresh herbs, use 1 chopped Tablespoon of each.

Dill & Chive: Add 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh dill (or 2 teaspoons dried dill) and 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives to the basic mix.

Rosemary & Feta: Add 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary and 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 4 ounces) to the basic mix.

Italian: Add 1 teaspoon each dried basil and oregano (or 1 Tablespoon each chopped fresh basil and oregano), 2 minced cloves of garlic, and 1/2 cup finely grated parmesan or romano cheese to the basic mix.

Other Additions: Any dried or fresh herbs;  1/2 cup finely chopped onion, 1/2 cup chopped scallions; 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour or 1/2 cup oats in place of 1/2 cup of the all-purpose flour. Or practically anything else you can think of — just use your imagination.

Tags: baking, bread

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Food, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.