Drink Your Food: Beer Bread

Someone pointed out to me a couple days after my return from food coma hiatus that my last blog post was, let's say, "annoying preachy."  Let's also just say this person was my loving mother who, in a very first grade teacher way is, let's say, brutally honest.  I did not re-read my post because I'm usually too embarrassed to read my own writing (this is true, I never proof-read a single paper I wrote in college...), so I just took her word for it.  And because I care about my 13 sensitive, yet loyal, followers I would like to apologize.  Sometimes the harsh realities of an unforgiving and non-opportunistic world set in after a hard day of lounging around the house and I just needed to let it out.  Please forgive me.

Moving on...

I found out a few days ago that I have a few good food pictures on my camera, but no way to get the pictures on my computer.  And my cat is still missing.  That means: no original food pictures, no kitty cat pictures.  Oh well.

I do have a recipe I'd like to share regardless.

This one is an Alton Brown recipe--whom I became much more interested in (though I think he is still an annoying dork) when I downloaded a few episodes of Good Eats.  My mom was talking to me one day about how my dad used to make beer rye bread, which is impressive in so many ways because I believe she was referring to the man who, when I was growing up, could barely put a box of macaroni and cheese together.  Apparently, it was pretty good, too (the bread, not the mac).  I decided I wanted to dabble in more beer related cooking and then I saw an episode of Alton's show in which he makes beer cheese bread.

Here we go:

CHEDDAR BEER BREAD


1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp fresh dill, chopped (optional)
5 ounces sharp cheddar, chopped or grated
12 ounces cold beer, preferably a strong ale
2 jalepenos, de-seeded (if you feel so inclined) and sliced


Ok, so I normally don't try to outright steal recipes unless I think that they are really good enough to share.  This bread is good, yes, but that's not what I feel compelled to share it.  So--bear with me--I think it really sucks how Alton approaches this recipe.  His recipe is WEIGHED and not measured.  To me, that makes him a total douche and these frustrations were vented when I was attempting to make the bread.  Because you know what?  I love to cook and do it a lot, but I don't have a scale at my house.  I don't own a fucking bakery!  And while a scale is on my list of things to adorn my kitchen counter with, I think it's totally bogus to make a perfectly good recipe somewhat inaccessible, or at least a huge pain in the ass, to some people.  So, here's what I have to say Alton:  SUCK IT.  So there you go, I tweaked it a little and put it into measurements rather than weights.

Oh, fuck it:

I have tons of cat pictures.  Who am I kidding?

Oh yeah, you'll need a 9x5 bread pan, like this:

Nice!

And pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.

This one is pretty easy, so crack open another brewski--buy a six pack--and get yourself cooking.

Whisk together the dry stuff.  Add the dill and one jalapeno.  Mix around.  Add the cheese. Mix around some more.  Ok, the beer.  Yeah, this is going to sound preachy, but I'm going to say it: don't be a lazy dork and buy some of your favorite crappy Corona lime or whatever crap you drink.  Why don't you get your butt in the seat of your car or whatever you use to push yourself around and grab yourself a nice local ale?  In my first batch, I used a New Glarus lager and in my second batch I used a Wild Onion ale.  Both were locally delicious.  Your tongue will thank you.  So now, add the beer in right in the center and mix in until the mixture is wet, but don't over mix.  Like any bread related thing, you don't want to over mix!

A little lesson:  If you over mix your bread, you work the gluten too much and the bread becomes chewy and less manageable.  A pizza dough is a great example of this; if you over-work it, it becomes very difficult to flatten out and bounces back in a completely annoying way.  Unless you want unbearably chewy bread, take not and mix as little as possible.

Take the dough and put it into a well greased pan--I used butter.  Top the bread with the remaining jalapeno slices.

Toss that bad boy in the oven for, let's say, 45-50 minutes.  Alton says until an instant-read thermometer reads an internal temperature of 210 degrees.  God, what a dick.  You can use a thermometer if you have one, but if you don't a good bet is to wait until 50 minutes has passed and the bread looks nice and golden.

When it's done you should be a few more beers deep into the six pack, so I like to slide it right out of the pan while it's still hot and put it on a rack in order to not have to think about it anymore.

Since there is no picture available, let's just say that your bread should look like a nice loaf of bread, and less like a dead bird or something.  Oh whatever, in the spirit of drinking, I'll just steal one:

Cheers!