Whole Wheat Beer Bread

Beer bread.  I had heard of beer bread, but never tried any before yesterday.  Wow.  This was, without a doubt, the fastest, easiest, tastiest bread I have ever made.  It took around five minutes for the ingredients to come together, an hour in the oven, and I had a fresh loaf of delicious beer bread.  My bread came out soft, fluffy, slightly sweet, and with a malty aftertaste.

I used mostly whole wheat flour to give my bread more nutrition, but you can use all white flour if you prefer.  After you decide what kind of flour you want to use in your bread, you have to make the most important decision:  what kind of beer to use?  I read on Wikipedia that different beers result in different types of beer bread.  A dark beer will give you a darker, heavier flavored loaf, while a spiced beer will give your bread some spice flavor.  However, after baking, your loaf of bread will retain only a little bit of beer flavor, so subtler flavors may be lost.  And non drinkers need not fear-all of the alcohol bakes off during the cooking process.

I chose to use Moose Drool partly because it is delicious, and partly because I had a bottle in my fridge.  I was hoping the delicious malty sweetness would come out in my bread, and I was right.  My bread had a lovely aftertaste of malt.

Once you have your flour and your beer, you need only a couple more ingredients.  I added 3 teaspoons of baking powder to my flour.  Some recipes call for self rising flour, but if you use regular flour like I did, go ahead and add some baking powder to your recipe.  After the baking powder, you only need one more ingredient:  sugar.  And that's everything.  So simple.

Ingredients
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup flour
3 tea baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
12 oz. beer


Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  Grease a loaf pan really well.  Sift together your flour and baking powder and mix in the sugar.  Pour in your beer and mix until just combined.  Pour into your loaf pan and bake for 55 minutes.


Cool and enjoy!