Beer Bread!

If the title alone is not enticing enough to want to bake this bread, the smell of it filling your kitchen should be! If you're anything like Matt and I, we love our breads, so when I received this recipe, I was very keen to try it out. And the fact that it also combined beer, well, that made me even more excited to try it out.

At my recent wedding shower, the theme of the day was kitchen and cooking, and the idea was for guests to share with me one of their favourite cooking recipes, along with an ingredient or cooking utensil.  Along with a fabulous new Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, in bright red, nonetheless, I also received some great recipes, ingredients, and cooking gadgets. I thought what better way to say thank you than to try out all the recipes and share them with you all! This is the first installment of something I like to call, "Cooking with Friends".

The Beer Bread recipe came from a colleague and baseball gal, Julie, and along with the recipe, she included the pan, wooden spoon, and of course, a can of beer. It totally makes sense to bake bread with beer since it already contains the yeast! Simply pour in the beer to the dry mixture of flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder, along with a few spices of thyme and oregano, and you've got yourself a bread batter in now time! Fold all together, spread into a bread pan, bake for about 50 minutes, and you've got yourself a great tasting loaf of bread! None of this waiting for the yeast to activate and the dough to rise...

Thanks again to Julie for sharing this recipe with me. Since it bakes up in no time, and the batter can be mixed together with just a bowl and spoon, this is definitely going into my baking rotation. I've already baked a second loaf this week, this time using whole wheat flour inst

ead, and used a different time of beer - an Amsterdam Amber Nut Ale. This created an entirely different type of bread, but still just as good! I think by varying the different flour types and beer flavours, you can certainly create a variety of different loafs. We love toasting a few pieces and spreading with butter and peanut butter for breakfast... a great way to start the day!

NOTE: I'll post the full recipe later, along with my variations.