Beer Bread

I did legit karaoke for the first time Saturday night. Before that, I had just done it in the privacy of a friend's house at Wes where we only had 4 karaoke CDs so we just sang a lot of Taylor Swift (which I loved).

But Saturday? There was Spice Girls, Taylor Swift, Macklemore (I just had to do the rap part from "Can't Hold Us"), Jason Mraz, Josh Groban, Michael Buble, Queen, ABBA... They had EVERYONE. So many options. It was so much fun, flipping through the books and finding songs to sing and yeah. Part of me FREAKED out when I saw how large of a 'musicals' section they had. I kind of want to go back there by myself sometime for an hour and just do karaoke to my musical theater audition songs - they had some of them!

But anyway, I was craving some beer bread yesterday. Random right? But I listened to my brain, baked up a loaf, and have been enjoying it almost non stop.

It's so good. It's considered a quick bread, denser than a normal loaf of bread, and has the aroma and mild taste of beer and butter. It's pretty perfect. What's even more perfect is that there's no yeast involved, no rising time, and it only takes about 5 minutes to put together. No joke. And then you pop it in the oven and less than an hour later, you have deliciously buttery beer bread. You can use any beer you want - I used Heineken because that's what we had in the fridge, but a dark ale would give the bread a stronger flavor or you can also use a light beer if that's all you have. Experiment!

This bread would be perfect with some soup or chili, bake it for a BBQ to go with burgers, hot dogs and baked beans, or you can just eat it like I do - plain and by the chunk/handful.

Beer Bread

makes 1 loaf

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 12-ounce bottle of beer
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Whisk together. Pour the beer into the bowl. Using a wooden spoon, stir the beer into the dry ingredients until it just comes together.

Pour half of the melted butter into the bottom of the loaf pan. Spoon all the dough into the pan. Then pour the remaining half of the melted butter onto the top of the batter.

Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean and the top is golden brown.

[source: The Novice Chef]