Beer Bread

By: Pete on 19:10:00

...also known as possibly the simplest recipe in the world. When I did the Beef and Beer Pie a couple of weeks ago, I bought 2 bottles of Chocolate Porter... I only needed one, but I wanted a back-up in case it went wrong, and the shop only had 2 in stock, so I grabbed them both. Since then it's been sitting on the side (I don't drink, so it's not going to be randomly attacked). A few nights ago I randomly came on the concept of bread baked using beer, did a bit of reading, and ended up throwing this together.

There are basically 2 ways of making beer bread...either as a sodabread/quickbread, or in the more traditional way. I did the sodabread method, for the other method you treat it as normal bread, but replace the water and yeast with beer. Apparently you also need to warm the beer slightly to activate the yeast in it. I'd like to try this method, as I think it might be a great base for a malt loaf, giving you a sour offset to sweet fruits.

This is probably the simplest bread recipe I've ever done, and it gives a pleasant, sour loaf, which is delicious with cream cheese spread on it (also good with soup)

Beer Quickbread - Recipe

• Pre-heat oven to 180'C
• Grease and flour a 2lb loaf tin

Ingredients

• 375g self-raising flour
• 330ml beer (probably something with a fairly strong flavour)
• 20g light muscavado sugar
• 10g butter (melted and cooled)
• Sesame seeds (to decorate)

1) Put the flour in a large mixing bowl with the sugar

2) Pour in the beer, and mix until smooth batter is just formed

3) Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and level

4) Drizzle the butter over the top

5) Sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of this

6) Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes

7) Remove from the oven, and the tin, and cool on a wire rack.