Buttery Beer Bread

Buttery Beer Bread - made July 4, 2014 from The Novice Chef

This uses up #4 of the 6-pack of beer I originally bought for the Slow Cooker French Dip. I don't know why I feel compelled to keep trying out recipes that use beer instead of giving the remaining beer bottles away. Maybe it's because out of my friends who drink beer, most, if not all, of them are probably snobby enough about their beer that Heineken isn't going to cut it. They go to micro breweries and talk knowledgeably about - well, I don't know enough about beer to tell you and apparently, I wasn't listening to them when they talked about it. So giving them my leftover Heineken would be like them offering me a cupcake bought at Safeway. Uh, wow, thanks, that's so nice of you. (Really, do I have to eat it?)

Besides, since I already have the beer anyway, it's a rare chance to try recipes that use beer that I had always passed up before. Because I have no intention of buying beer again simply because I find it too confusing and don't know what to get. No need for me to re-live those tortuous moments at Target scratching my head looking at an end cap of beer and being baffled.

I tried this beer bread and it was really easy to make. Pour half the melted butter at the bottom of the loaf pan, dump the beer bread dough into it, pour the rest of the butter over it and bake. Before you can ask what could go wrong, let me tell you. First, the butter didn't incorporate into the dough as fast as I expected. Some of it decided to overflow the loaf pan instead, drip onto the bottom of my newly-cleaned oven and burn to the smokiness which greeted me when I opened the oven door to check on the bread. Awesome.

Second, and worse, it tasted like beer. I know, I know, there's a reason why it's called Beer Bread but I had been counting on the alcohol burning off in the baking and not tasting like beer. That's what happened the 3 other times I had baked or cooked with beer. Not so with Buttery Beer Bread. It lives up to its name, not just the beer part but also the butter part. It really was buttery. I shouldn't be colored surprise since it had a freaking stick of butter in it but it was a tad too buttery for me.  And trust me, I don't say that very often. The shame of it is, if I had liked beer, this would actually be excellent bread. No joke. The texture was crunchy on the outside and soft and well, bready, on the inside. Perfect chewiness. Seriously perfect. Considering it's no-knead dough and how much I love bread, perhaps it's just as well I don't like beer or I might've eaten the whole loaf. As it was, the beer saved me from myself.

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 bottle (12 ounces) beer
1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Line with parchment paper for easy removal (optional).
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Using a wooden spoon, stir the beer into the dry ingredients until just mixed.
3. Pour half the melted butter into the bottom of the loaf pan. Then spoon the batter into the pan, and pour the rest of the butter on top of the batter.
4. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve immediately with a smear of more butter, or reheat in the microwave for 20 seconds.