The Way to a Man’s Heart

They say they way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, right?  But what about a man that loves beer…and bread?  Well, the way to his heart is still through his stomach, but you get there a lot faster if you combine his two favorite things.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Beer Bread!

I like how the light in that shot sort of makes the bread look like it was sent from heaven…because I kinda think it was.

Before I go any further, I would like to point out that before tonight, I have never made bread before.  As in EVER.  Never made bread before tonight.  I’ve told you before that I like to cook, not bake.  And frankly, the idea of bread making intimidated me – what with all the yeast, and rising, and kneading, etc, etc, etc…But, as Gabi from Honest Fare points out, the use of beer in the recipe neatly avoids all that jazz because – what is one of the key ingredients in beer…

YEAST!

The recipe was super easy.  In under an hour, I went from someone who never made bread to having fresh homemade bread on my table! The ingredients list was super simple.

First you mix and sift the dry ingredients, then add the “secret ingredient”…

I have no idea what kind of beer that is.  Gabi seemed to feel that “cheap” beer was best.  So I sent BG out for a single can of “cheap plain beer” and this is what he brought back.  It’s probably the kind of thing a beer snob like him wouldn’t ever be caught dead drinking.

Once the secret ingredient has been added, mix until a “stiff batter” is formed.  Gabi recommends that you use your hands once it starts to stiffen so that you don’t over mix it.  Here goes nothing!

Yuck!

After you wash the sticky, yeasty goo off your hands, scrape the batter into a loaf pan, brush on melted butter and bake away!

Voila!  Fresh, homemade bread in under an hour!

Get me!  I made bread! It was so yummy with a biscuity texture.  Delicious!  So very, very delicious.  Some of the commenters on Gabi’s blog discussed their successes with different flavors of beer and adding various herbs.  That’s the beauty of recipe as simple as this.  The potential variations are endless.

Bread this yummy would have been perfectly lovely eaten with just butter or dipped in olive oil.  But with fresh bread in the house, we had to get fancier than that.  Tune in tomorrow to see what we did with it!

Cheers, y’all!