Fermentation Nation- Beer Bread

Bread is nice. Beer is better. This was quick (for bread) and easy (for bread) Good Eats recipe. There is no extra yeast, or rising time, or kneading.

The goods! Please note the thick grated cheese. This cheese should be grated by you! Don't buy shredded cheese- it has cornstarch added to it to prevent it from sticking together and that stucks. Don't be that person, shred your own!

All purpose flour and whole wheat flour are added by weight because we do things the Alton Brown way here.

Baking soda, salt, sugar and dried thyme...because fresh is harder to fine. Alton used a whisk to mix this up and incorporate the grated cheese.

 Now for the fun and fizzy part! We used Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It was delicious.

First a glass for myself.

 And then one to the dry goods.

And fold together as quickly as possible. I don't know why but AB says to. Quick hands!

 Baked for less than an hour but don't get excited. This sucker takes for-ev-ver to cool down.

And then you have to cool it again. But its totally cool to pick at the bits in the back.

And finally. Bread. Beer bread. Cheesy beer bread. It was good by itself and even better with beer. Absolutely no butter needed.

We paired with butter garlic sausage, homegrown mustard greens, and Steven's homemade IPA (one of the last ones!)

Henry ate carrots frozen into the shape of a shot glass. Because shot glass molds are the only ice cube trays I have. Classy.

Beer Bread by Alton Brown

I followed the above recipe aside from using dried thyme instead of fresh because I couldn't find it and I had already been to the grocery store twice. I also used a smudge more cheese because I'm a woman of action!

I plan on making this again over the Thanksgiving holiday. We are celebrating with my in-laws a day late with a hearty soup instead of the traditional turkey. When I make it again I'm going to mix the dry ingredients up really well before adding beer. I kept finding baking powder pockets in the bread. Rookie mistake.