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Thursday, November 4, 2010

Easy Bread Recipe

I'm one of those lucky women who happen to like baking, cooking, and cleaning. However, it gives me the greatest pleasure to get to do these acts of service as a gift to others. 

Today my gift of cooking and cleaning is for dear friends. We have been invited for dinner and I am in charge of bringing bread. Since I love to bake and the new house rule is never buy bread when you can bake your own-- homemade bread here we come.

I look around the house searching for inspiration and that's when I stumble quite literally into the kegerator. Yep, Scott is a home brew kind of guy and he built his own kegerator and now we brew beer together. The lightning strike of inspiration comes and I find a great beer bread recipe. I made some adjustments and added a few savory touches and what came out of the oven a mere 45 minutes later was miraculous.  I also got to use some of Scott's Dad's honey.
There no waiting for the dough to rise or kneading involved and since I wanted something fast and easy this was the perfect recipe. It literally took me three and a half minutes to mix the dough and pop it into the oven. 

If you don't have your own kegerator filled with your home brew you can use 12 ounces of whatever beer you have laying around. I used the Amber that we had made and it brought some sweetness to the bread which is why I added the Parmesan cheese and Italian seasonings to the bread to play up the savory and sweet side of the bread. After dinner I was rewarded with an empty plate. Not a slice left over... Just the way I like it!


This could easily be sliced and used for sandwiches or to enjoy along side a juicy grilled steak or chicken like we did. Enjoy this recipe and stick around.. There will be more bread recipes coming your way! This is only the beginning of my bread making extravaganza!

Brew Bread 

 2 cups unsifted self rising flour
2 tablespoons honey
12 ounces of beer, room temperature
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon Italian Seasonings


1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, honey, beer, Parmesan cheese, and Italian seasonings using a spatula. The dough will be tacky and glue like resembling wet biscuit dough. 

3. Pour the batter into a greased bread pan and sprinkle with a teaspoon of extra parmesan cheese and Italian seasonings if you desire. Bake for 45 minutes. The dough will double in size as it cooks.

4. Remove from the oven and cool then slice and enjoy with Smart Balance butter or Extra virgin olive oil for a treat!

Servings: 12


Nutritional Skinny:


129 calories / 2 grams fat / 18 grams carbohydrates / .6 grams fiber / 4.7 grams protein

Mental Health Benefit: Believe it or not.. beer can aide in a healthy lifestyle (in moderation of course). Beer has many B vitamins and has also been shown to increase the level of anti-oxidants in the blood stream as well as increase the good cholesterol (HDL) and decrease the likelihood of blood clots. Also, since you are using it to bake with the alcohol is cooked off so you are left with the healthy side effects from the grain brewing without the head ache the next day!

I hope you enjoy making bread as much as I do!

Cheers!




3 comments:

Golden Daily Scoop said...

Your bread look delish! I love making my own bread but def don't do it enough!

Scott Lambeth said...

As it turns out, I love to eat and have my house cleaned. See how lucky you are.

:)

Hot Mess Cooking said...

Kristy - The bread was so delicious and so easy. It brings making your own bread to a level so everyone can do it.

Scott - I still think you're the lucky one.