Round Three: Sexy Three-Way Beer Bread Bake-off

[510dat]

Yesterday we broke all of our rules: our recipes weren’t by famous chefs, and we didn’t even find them online. Ok, we didn’t make seafood bread, but that goes without saying. What we did do was combine the two foods that mankind has never been able to do without; bread, and beer. That’s right, bread made with beer. Which is probably better than beer made with bread. Actually, I found inspiration by reading the Beer Bread thread on this forum, but I won’t tell if you don’t.

Finding a beer-bread recipe isn’t that difficult, but finding one that is by a famous chef turned out to be impossible. Almost all of the recipes we did find are variations of one recipe that uses “self-rising flour,” which is something I’ve never heard of before. We figured that since everybody else is doing variants of one recipe, why shouldn’t we? The basic recipe is very simple:

3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup sugar
12 ounces beer
2 tablespoons melted butter

Mix and bake; pretty simple.
From here:
Recipes : Beer Bread : Food Network

But, I’ve never seen “self-rising flour” before, so we had to figure out how to make our own. Fortunately this turned out to be pretty easy, you just add some baking powder and salt to flour. See:
Aunt Jemima—Self–Rising Flour

But, that’s pretty boring all by itself. I’m never satisfied with a recipe, and this one just begs for more. For inspiration, Aargnzarf and I returned to Whole Foods, where we knew we could get whole wheat flour in bulk. I had this idea to make a rich, dark earthy bread, and Aargnzarf wanted to make an herby bread, but neither of us had a clear idea what we were doing. So, we shopped Whole Foods the same way some women shop malls; by grabbing one or two of everything.

As a point of advice, this is not the time to devise your recipe. We of course found some bacon that just cried out to us, and some cheese that needed eating, and we realized that we had a threesome on our hands.

[510dat]

To keep this essay in some semblance of order, I’ll spare you the shopping details and give you the recipes. Since we baked all three at the same time, we did a couple things differently than you might if you only do one, so read this before you start baking.

Herby Soup or Salad Bread:

1.5 C Whole wheat pastry flour
1.5 C all purpose flour
4.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp salt
12 oz. Newcastle Brown Ale
4 Tsb light brown sugar
1 Tsb Chopped fresh basil
1.5 Tsb chopped fresh dill
1 4oz. can tomato paste
6 cloves of garlic, quartered

In one bowl, gently mix the dry ingredients and the chopped herbs. In another bowl, mix the beer and tomato paste until blended. Mix all the ingredients together until barely mixed, and pour into a buttered and floured bread pan.

Noah’s Breakfast Bread

1.5 C Whole wheat pastry flour
1.5 C all purpose flour
4.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp salt
12 oz Newcastle Brown Ale
0.5 C light brown sugar
.38 lb Cheddar – Cabot Vermont Reserve
.35 lb Black Forest Bacon

Just like the Herby bread, mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Grate the cheese, put half in the bowl and save the other half for later. Dice the bacon and fry in a large saucepan until crunchy, and pour both the bacon and the bacon grease into the dry mix. Add the beer, and combine before pouring into a floured bread pan.

Dark Molasses Dessert Bread

1.5 C Whole wheat pastry flour
1.5 C all purpose flour
4.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp salt
12 oz Guinness Extra Stout
3/8 C medium brown sugar
2 Tsb clover honey
1 tsp molasses
6 dates, chopped
1/4 C rolled oats

Mix the mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a second bowl, mix the Guinness, honey and molasses; this will take some time. I mixed, then let the measuring spoons sit in the beer while I did other stuff, and then mixed it again until dissolved. Add the beer mix to the dry mix, combine, and pour into a floured bread pan.

All three loaves were baked at about 375F for one hour. Five minutes before they were done, pour 2 Tsb of melted butter over each, and then add the remainder of the grated cheese to Noah’s Breakfast Bread.

I had the baking rack too high, so the tops of the Herb and Dark breads were slightly burnt, but the Breakfast Bread came out beautifully.

They all came out very well. They were moist, soft and tasty. None of them were as sweet as we expected, with the Dark bread being slightly sweet. The tomato paste in the Herb bread seems to have balanced out the small amount of sugar we put in it.

The Herb bread would go excellently with a soup or salad, but is complete all by itself. It almost tastes like a tomato soup on its own. It could use more herbs, especially the dill, and a bit less tomato paste.

Noah’s Breakfast Bread tasted like an omelet bread instead of eggs. It was a bit salty, as both the bacon and the cheese had a fair amount in it. We felt it could use more bacon and less cheese (though maybe just putting the cheese on top would work too…). Adding mushrooms and or onions would go very well with it. The beer flavor came out more in this one than the other two.

The Dark Dessert Bread was a good mix of flavors, and was basically a mildly sweet and full-flavored sweetbread. Both Aargnzarf and my brother said “this needs vanilla ice cream” out of earshot of each other, so take that as a hint. It had a noticeable but not overwhelming flavor from the molasses and honey. In the future I’d add a tablespoon more of each and use a half a cup of sugar. Chopped dried apricots or coarsely chopped almonds would be welcome additions. You could use raisins instead of the dates, but the flavor would be much sharper, compared to the smooth flavor from the dates.

Eat as much as you possibly can while they are still steaming; the taste and texture is wonderful.

We didn’t even try to vote as to which was the best; all three were very good. And nobody loses in a threesome.

[jeff]

Looks good! I need to buy you a scale for Christmas. =)

[510dat]

lol, and an oven thermometer.

* note:
Noah's Breakfast bread is tasting a lot saltier the day after. I'd reduce the salt added to the dry mix, and maybe cut the bacon-fat in half to lighten up the taste.