Beer Bread

I have two recipes that I could blog about tonight, but I'm tired and there is a football game on that I want to watch right now (Go Packers!) so I'm going to do the *much* easier and shorter recipe. (I'll post about Chris' birthday cake tomorrow -- I promise.)

We were looking for a really easy dinner tonight since I had to make the cake as well, and Chris had to make a Bolognese sauce for dinner tomorrow night. I suggested making this Pastry Queen bread and eating it broiled with cheese on top along with some tomato soup. It sounded like a great plan -- super simple bread (seriously -- the easiest recipe in the world -- anyone can make this bread), with cheese and a canned soup.

What happened instead, was that we ate the bread with slices of cheese on top fresh from the oven. We never quite got around to the soup or the broiler -- but it was quite good and it was an incredibly easy meal that we ate while working on other things. The bread takes all of 5 minutes to mix up and requires only basic ingredients -- things I pretty much always have on hand. It takes about an hour to bake, but it's worth it.

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 (12 oz) bottle good-quality beer -- we used a Sam Adams Imperial Pilsner
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350. Generously grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan with butter or cooking spray. In a medium bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Pour in the beer and stir until just incorporated. (The dough will be sticky and heavy.) Pour half the melted butter into the bottom of the prepared loaf pan. Spoon in the bread dough and pour the remaining half of the butter on top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until bumpy top is golden brown. Remove from the pan and serve immediately.

Yum! Note the crispy looking edges in the picture below -- that's from butter and the butter makes those crispy edges utterly delicious. :)