Tag Archives: beer

Veronica’s Buttery Beer Bread

I’m not a baker. It’s just not what I do.

I want to be of the baking persuasion–my idealized visions of my future self involve pulling a tray of hot biscuits out of the oven, enveloping my family with the scents of freshly baked bread as soon as they walk in the door, and serving homemade pies and cakes pretty much every 10 minutes.

But once I actually get into the kitchen, I play with my usual friends–the skillet. The Dutch oven. Mushrooms and heavy whipping cream.

When my blogging friend Veronica from Recipe Rhapsody mentioned her buttery beer bread recipe though, my heart did a little flip flop in my chest. I wanted that bread.

And I wanted it bad.

The word ‘buttery’ probably played a large part.

Guys, you must make this bread. Let me outline the advantages in a strictly logical fashion:

1) It has only 2 ingredients. Okay fine! It has 6. But it feels like 2 when you’re making it.

2) This bread does not need to rise. So after 10 minutes of mixing and only an hour of baking, it’s on the table, baby. This means that you don’t have to plan in advance–you can make this bread on a whim.

3) The hands-on time could probably go below 10 minutes with practiced efficiency. The necessary actions can be summarized as follows: Sift! Stir! Spray! Plop! Bake.

Have you seen the light? Do you seeeee the liiiiiight? (name that movie)

Ingredients

3 c flour

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp salt

1 TBS baking powder

12 oz beer

1 stick butter

Preheat the oven to 375. Sift together the flour . . .

the sugar . . .

the salt . . .

and the baking powder.

Sifty sifty sift . . .

*Please sing a sifting ditty to yourself*

And if you get some granules at the bottom of the sifter like this:

Just press ’em through with the heel of your measuring cup. Like so.

Give it a little stir with a wooden spoon:

Now grab hold of that beer. I used Blue Moon, but any beer should work.

Pour it in. Into the bowl, not your mouth, silly!

Give the whole shebang another stir with the wooden spoon.

I found it easier to finish the mixing process with my big ole hand.

Now grab that dough!

FYI, if you’re like me and feel compelled to taste the raw dough, it won’t taste that delicious. But the flavor changes completely after baking, fear not. I wouldn’t lead you down the primrose path.

Oh, make sure you spray your baking pan. I used a loaf pan, and completely forgot to spray it until my hands looked like this:

That’s when my husband came riding into the kitchen on a white steed and sprayed the pan for me.

Thanks dear. And tell that white steed to wipe off its hooves before it comes back onto my kitchen floor.

Anyway, plop in the dough and push it into as even a shape as you can.

Clean your hands off at this point–and also your camera. Mine had bits of dough on it–I wonder why.

Sorry–I just wanted an excuse to sneak that picture in there again.

Moving on!

Melt the stick of butter.

Pour the melted butter all over the bread.

It’s drowning in the golden stuff. Oh, yes. Bake your golden treat for 1 hour.

Remove it from the oven. The bread should pop right out of the loaf pan thanks to the butter. Cool it on a wire rack for about 10-15 minutes . . .

. . . and dive in!

It’s best fresh, so set your friends and family on it. Don’t expect any leftovers.

Veronica, I’m forever in your debt.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Veronica’s Buttery Beer Bread

Feeling like a King

Once upon a time, I heard from our good friend Alex that drinking beer in the shower makes you feel like a king.

One day the other week I was taking a shower, thinking about food. No surprise there. Hmmm, I was thinking, how could I combine the idea of twice baked potatoes and the idea of crash hot potatoes in an iron skillet to produce layers of magic in my mouth? It’s a question I’ve been pondering for a few months, on and off. As my brain happily perused images of heavy cream, garlic, chives, and indecent amounts of shredded cheese, suddenly, out of the blue, it hit me–

–today was the day to test the beer in the shower thing that I’d been hearing about for years. I don’t know what brought it to mind during this shower as opposed to any other; I can only call it ‘destiny.’ I realized at the same moment that I had a responsibility to my blogging friends to report back on this combination of cleanliness and drink and hot water. Did it really make you feel like a king? Or was Alex just leading me down the primrose path? I was going to get to the bottom of this pronto.

My first thought was contamination. I had visions of my Tres Semme shampoo leaking its way into my beer supply and destroying the whole experience. But don’t worry! It was only after all the chemical processing was over–shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and Noxzema–that I lifted my voice:

“Honey!” I cried out above the noise of the shower, “Could you please bring me a beer?”

“A beer?”

*pregnant pause*

“Yes, a beer!”

It’s a testament to my husband’s faith, goodwill, and general goodness of soul that the beer was promptly delivered, no further questions asked.

He handed over the beer.

I opened the can safely away from the streams of shower water.

I returned to the comforts of the hot water.

Then I took that first, gloriously cool sip.

Analyze your feelings. Be objective, I told myself. People expect cold, hard, reporting from your blog. You can’t let them down.

So here’s the cold, hard truth, and I hope you’re ready for it:

I wouldn’t say I felt exactly like a king.

. . . maybe like an earl. Or a duke. Or maybe even the squire of a duke.

This could be a result of the following:

-I only drank 4 sips. I can never finish a beer anyway.

-Hamm’s is the cheapest beer at $3.29 for a 6-pack

I have had chocolate in the shower once or twice, and I would tend to say that beats out beer–I believe further testing is required though. Note to self: keep candy tray with assortment of chocolates in shower area for analytic experimentation. Track results over the next 10 years, and report back.

And that about wraps it all up. Come back Monday for an in-depth analysis of my experience eating sushi while sky diving, and my other experience having high tea while deep-sea diving. Did I feel like a king, an outlaw, a princess, or a mere scullery wench? The answers are not to be missed!

*Note/disclaimer: don’t drink in the shower. You could get hurt.