Macheesmo

I forgot how much I like doing polls because you guys always vote for something that I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise. Last week’s poll was an ode to gluten and you guys picked the most gluten thing on the list: Whole Wheat Beer Bread!

Beer bread also known as: powdered gluten mixed with gluten water.

And I’m in love with it.

Unlike many breads you don’t have to sit around waiting for it to rise or anything. You also don’t have to knead it or do more than stir it all together.

It might just be the perfect quick bread unless you don’t like gluten in which case you might want to avert your eyes for the day.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread

by Nick

Serves:

1 loaf

Prep Time:

10 mins

Total Time:

1 hr 20 mins

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A delicious easy-to-make whole wheat beer bread that has a super soft crumb and nice crispy crust. Perfect for morning toast!

Very roughly adapted from a food.com recipe.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (6.4 oz.) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) whole wheat flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 (12 oz.) beer, not hoppy

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 9×5 loaf pan and set aside.

2) In a medium bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Be sure to weigh flours.

3) Pour in beer and stir to combine. Transfer dough to buttered pan.

4) Drizzle melted butter over loaf. Move into oven and bake for 55 minutes.

5) Remove loaf and let cool for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool for another 5-10 minutes before slicing and serving. Serve with butter and jam.

High altitude: Reduce baking powder by 1/2 teaspoon.

The Importance of Weight

This bread recipe is seriously one of the easiest I’ve ever made. The one trick is that you do really need to weigh your flours. Because you’re adding a specific amount of liquid to it, if you have too much flour then the bread will turn into a tough brick in the oven.

Frequently, when people measure flour by the cup, they over-measure the flour. I did a test one time and found that even I over measured by 1/4 of a cup. So if I’m supposed to add in 3 cups, I would be off by 3/4 of a cup. That’s a lot of error in a baking recipe.

If you don’t have a scale, then your best bet is to sift the flour and then carefully scoop it into the measuring cup to keep it light. You don’t want to pack it down.

If you have a scale then just pop the bowl on the scale and measure out 6.4 oz. of all-purpose flour. That’s 1 1/2 cups.

Then reset the scale and add 6 ounces of whole wheat flour. That’s also 1 1/2 cups but whole wheat flour is lighter than all-purpose flour (I think because it has more surface area).

Then you need to add some sugar, baking powder, and salt to the mix.

There’s a good amount of baking soda in this mix so it’s important to move somewhat quickly after you stir everything together. You don’t want to let the dough sit for 15 minutes and then come back and bake it. Bad news.

High Altitude Alert: If you happen to live at high altitude, reduce the baking powder you use by about 1/2 teaspoon.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread Time

When your dry stuff is mixed together, pour in the beer!

You can use any beer under the sun, but I would avoid anything really hoppy. So no IPAs, please. Save those for drinkin’.

Stir this all together and you’ll have a thick mixture. It’ll be impossible to knead this. It’s a stir and bake bread.

Butter Goodness

Two important butter steps here:

1) Butter the pan well so you can remove the loaf when it’s done baking.

2) Melt 1/4 cup of butter and pour it over the loaf before baking. The original recipe said 1/2 cup but that seemed ridiculous to me and 1/4 cup gave me great results.

Yep. Just pour it right on top of the bread. It’ll form little pools of butter that will seep into the bread as it bakes.

If you wanted to healthify this, you could use coconut oil instead of butter or just leave out the butter pour, but the fat on top gives you a beautiful crispy crust.

Bake this guy at 375 degrees F. for 55 minutes.

See what I mean?

Let the bread cool for a few minutes and then pop it out of the loaf pan.

Slice it up and serve it with your favorite jam! It would also be a great alternative to cornbread for chili!

In the time it took you to read this post, you could’ve had this loaf in the oven so get with it!