Beer Bread Wonderland

Never have I ever met a bread with such versatility as I did when I made this little gem. Literally, so many different things you can do with it and this will NOT be the last post on this delicious concoction.

I have no idea how to make bread. I’m intimidated by it, I’m not a 40’s housewife and it’s just too big of an endeavor for me to embark on. Sorry.

So, I found a recipe for this stuff and went for it. The recipes for this stuff are pretty universal. There’s no big differences in them besides the additions, flair and of course, beer. Some vary on amounts of sugar, which makes sense.

So let’s cook some bread.

Start with a six pack of your favorite craft beer. You only need one for the bread, but you’ll need something to do while it bakes, right?

This beer, is not my favorite craft beer. It’s a beer that a friend of ours left behind from a party we had. It’s disgusting. No offence to Sam Adams, the man knows what he’s doing, usually, but this hoppy brew was just not for me. At all.

However, it made some delicious bread. I figured by the taste of it, how much sugar to use, so I’d suggest drinking at least a bottle before you start, so you can make a fair judgment of the other ingredients. It’s only fair.

SO, follow this general recipe and twerk, I mean tweak, it to fit your taste and burr.

From the windows, to the walls, let’s make some drunk bread.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups of flour
1/3 cup of sugar
1tbsp of baking powder
1/2tsp of salt
1 12oz bottle of beer
3tbsp of butter, melted

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350, my oven sucks, hence the slightly charred bread. Don’t judge, it was tasty!

Mix dry ingredients, add beer, throw into a greased loaf pan and cover with the butter and bake for about 60 minutes!

I read you can use soda in place of beer, but, pardon my French, but fucking ew. You wanna shovel that crap into your poor kids, that’s on you, but you won’t even catch me cooking with that crap. /endrant

You can freeze the cooked loaf, I’m sure it’ll stay good for a while!

Roasted Garlic & Herb Biscuits

 

Biscuits!

These are to die for, just sayin’.

Let’s get to them biscuits!

INGREDIENTS:

Baking mix, any kind, but I like buttermilk
1 head of garlic, roasted then mashed into a paste
Rosemary, thyme, cayenne, parmesan (grated or shredded)

DIRECTIONS:

Prepare the biscuits according to the box, mix in the garlic paste very well. Grease a cookie sheet and plop large tablespoon size balls onto the sheet. Sprinkle with the last 4 ingredients and bake! Easy peasy!

 

 

Enjoy!

Cinnamon Streusel Banana Bread

I had to post this in addition to my original banana bread because, it’s amazing. I made a loaf for the house and my lovey asked me to make a few for his bosses too! Needless to say, it’s a big hit!

There is no big difference from my original banana bread recipe which can be found here, except that about a half table spoon of cinnamon is added in with the sugar.

The difference is in the topping. Which is too easy.

Take about 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar and mix in another table spoon or 2 so of cinnamon. If your brown sugar isn’t so fresh or was left open and is hard as a rock, microwave a chunk for about 30 seconds. It will get soft and you can crumble it by hand. But be sure to go through it carefully and remove all the really tiny hard pieces. When the sugar gets older it forms tiny sugary rocks that can actually chip a tooth if you’re mid-munch.

Sprinkle the mixture over the banana bread before it goes in the oven. Take a toothpick and swirl the topping into the top of the batter.

The bread, with the topping, will take a little bit longer than an hour to cook. Just keep an eye on it after about an hour and fifteen minutes, until a knife inserted into the middle of the loaf, comes out clean.

This bread also freezes incredibly well!

Enjoy!

Classic Banana Bread

I thought this would be an appropriate recipe for my first post, and I’ll tell you why. I made this last night for the first time in a couple of months and in less than 24 hours, we managed to eat an entire loaf! As I sit here, typing this, I’m finishing the laaaast slice…. And it’s delicious. (Since I procrastinated and typed instead of eating my bread, my toddler has inevitably finished it for me. You snooze, you loose I guess!)
So here is the recipe! Enjoy!
Ingredients:
3 or 4 VERY ripe bananas (you’re going to be mashing these by hand, so you want soft bananas!)
1/3 Cup melted butter
3/4 Cup granulated sugar
1 Egg, beaten
1 Tsp vanilla extract
1 Tsp baking soda
1 1/2 Cup all purpose flour
Pinch of salt
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Smash bananas in a large bowl with a fork until all the chunks are good and smashed. Mix (with the same fork, if you want, but not with a beater) the melted butter into the mashed bananas, then add the sugar, beaten egg and vanilla. Mix well. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt in and mix. Add the flour last and mix well. Pour mixture into a buttered (oiled, sprayed, whatever your preference) 4x8in loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from pan, cool on a rack and slice to serve!