In a hurry? Need some sort of bread to go with your meal? Beer Bread to the rescue! Not only is it cheap (most of us have the ingredients on hand), but it’s yummy too. In a little over an hour you can have piping hot, delicious bread coming out of the oven.
Photo courtesy of Magitista via flickr.com2 1/4 Cups Flour
1 TBS Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp salt
12 oz (1 can) beer (or soda, or even champagne)
Mix everything together, pour into a greased loaf pan and let rise in a warm place for about 25 minutes (yes, you can skip this step if you are in a REAL hurry). Bake for 45 min in a 400 degree oven.
That’s it. Can you believe that they actually sell mixes of this stuff-and have the gall to charge $5 for it (that’s without the beer). Remember that the flavor of the beer you add will effect the final flavor of the bread-so if you’ve got some weird micro brew left from last summer’s BBQ that noone was brave enough to try, than throw it in. (Of course that would be a micro brew that someone else brought to the party and left-a true frugalite wouldn’t have wasted the money)
The variations to this recipe are endless. You can add grated cheese, bacon bits, onion, any mixture of herbs and spices that turns you on! Or you can use a light beer or fruit soda and then add berries, shredded apple, lemon or orange rind, cinnamon, raisins or whatever floats your boat (in that case you may want to add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the recipe).
If you are the un-experimental type, and need a recipe for the variations, try this one for whole wheat beer bread. And this site has a whole list of beer bread variations.
You could even make up packages of this and give it away as gifts. Gee, too bad I didn’t post this BEFORE the holidays, eh?
I use self-rising flour that requires only the addition of beer and sugar. This works for me b/c I use the self-rising for other things, but wouldn’t bother if it were the only application. The recipe is 3 cups self-rising flour, 3T sugar, one can of beer. Bake as you describe.
I used to love making beer bread but now we don’t have beer in the house. It never dawned on me that you could use soda. Have you tried it before? I might have to give it a go. Beer bread makes wonderful toast.
🙂
MMM good Annette
Looks great. I can almost smell ir from here.
Kate
I’ll have to give this a try — we have bought those $5 mixes before, and I would love to see how this compares! (Although, since we don’t drink, I have to get beer from my Dad. We made one loaf with sparkling white grape juice, and it just wasn’t the same.)
I”ve tried it with the soda and it tastes fine. If you prefer the taste of beer, but don’t drink it much, I’d recommend buying a cheap 6 pack-it isn’t like beer goes bad.
some of the recipes I’ve read call for self rising flour, but I just never have any on hand. If you have it, it is even less ingredients!
oops–you will see in your stats that you had a 10 hr visitor last night. I found the beer batter recipe and got interrupted. Didn’t know it was still up (or that the computer was still on) until this am…
I am going to make the beer bread though!