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A few days ago I made beer bread and tried to make it a rye bread. It did not work out. The oven was too hot or the bread was in too long and I must have gotten some of the ingredients in the wrong ratio. The bread was bitter and seemed, to me, oddly salty. The crust reminded me a pretzel. Most got tossed. I can't even blame the Blatz for this one. I do plan to try making a rye beer bread again, and making some changes. A bit less rye flour, keeping an eye on the loaf in the oven, and backing off on the baking soda all seem like Good Ideas.
A day or so later I made "5 minute chocolate mug cake" with a couple changes from the last time. I mixed it in the 2 cup measure and microwaved in a small pyrex mixing bowl. I remembered the salt. I used Merry's Irish Cream rather than milk (the little "airline" sized bottle is the right measure). I added chocolate chips since I had them. Again, I cut the baking time 15 seconds short of the suggested 3 minutes. The result was good. It was not noticeably rubbery. It served two quite well. It's not truly a "5 minute" thing, but it is fairly quick and the result is good.
Today I tried something new and instead of chocolate chip cookies, started with a recipe for a chocolate cookie with chocolate chips and used cherry chips instead. All the things I managed to get wrong before I seem to have finally overcome. The results look like proper cookies (not spread oddly thin) and they don't wilt when I pick them up, but they are still reasonably soft.
What did I do this time? This paragraph is mainly a note to myself, but what I did was this. Following the linked recipe (omitting any nuts and substituting a 10 oz. package of cherry chips for chocolate chips), I sifted the flour, then after adding the other dry ingredients (except for the sugar) I sifted that mix, twice, to mix them. I used "air pan" cookie sheets with parchment paper. I baked only on the top oven rack for 8 minutes and at about the 4 minute mark, I turned the cookie sheet 180 degrees so the cookies would all get about the same heat (I had noticed some unevenness to the cookies in an earlier batch). Before I re-used the cookies sheets, I cooled them with cold water so the cookies always had a cold start.
I make beer bread from time to time and I've used a few different beers to do it. Since it's pretty much just baked away the beer need not be anything great, but it ought to be something that doesn't make one stare at the bottle in disbelief and wonder what the brewer has against people. This is a variant of what I've dubbed Child's Law. Julia Child said that one should never use so-called "cooking wine" to cook with. Use a wine that you would drink. It doesn't have to be anything great, just something you'd drink.
Some might argue that I've already been violating any variant of Child's Law by using Schlitz. The return to the 1960s recipe is an improvement over what it had been, but it's not a truly great thing. It is, however, good enough that I wouldn't refuse one for taste reasons. Thus it is good enough for baking.
I got curious about another name, Schmidt, which was (scarily) even cheaper than Schlitz. When I opened a bottle I got a whiff that reminded me of Schlitz. Turns out it's made by the same company (Pabst/Heileman). It did not taste like Schlitz, with that peculiar note of.. something I can't identify and am not sure I really want to... and is pretty much a typical cheap U.S. bland macrobrew. Inoffensive to the point of almost not even being there. I've decided it's a suitable "lawnmower beer" (one you'd have on a hot day to cool down and still claim to be having a beer) and might be reasonable with hot dogs or pizza. It's nothing great, but nothing that I'd pour down the sink either.
And a couple of days ago I made beer bread with it. That turned out quite well. I did make a couple changes to the recipe I had been using: I baked at 375 F rather than 350 F and for 45 minutes rather than 30 minutes. That seems to make for a less crumbly, higher quality bread and drives off more of any undesirable odd flavor (something that Schlitz would leave behind). I'm not sure that would work for Budweiser's American Ale, but that's almost upscale for baking anyway.
When I first saw this recipe a few years ago I tried it. Just once, I think. I'm not sure why I didn't make it again. I suspect it was that it didn't come out of the pan very well, I didn't need to have such a bread around, and that it used up good beer and I tended not to have not so good beer around. Sometime before Christmas I tried it again, using Budweiser's American Ale which while cheap, is reasonably good stuff. Good enough to drink (It tastes like a beer. Really.) but not so good in the bread. What gives the beer a good character gives the bread a not so good one. And it still stuck to the pan. And we (Jay and I) still ate it way too fast.
Schlitz, a truly cheap beer - or "beer" - recently reverted to the 1960s recipe in an attempt to put the 'L' back in the name. Not long ago I picked up some (and made sure it was 1960s recipe version) to give it a(nother) try. It's better than it was, but that's not saying much. It's still not what I would choose to drink, but it's certainly not the worst I've had. I recall that Julia Child said that if you wouldn't drink a wine, you shouldn't cook with it either. It didn't need to be great, it just had to not be bad - and you would not drink what is sold as "cooking wine." So I tried again. You can decide for yourself if I heeded or ignored Julia Child's advice in regard to the namesake ingredient here. I also made a couple changes to the original recipe:
Recipe source
3 c flour
3 tsp baking powder*
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp sugar
1 bottle or can of beer (approx 12 oz/350 ml)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients in loaf pan.
Pour beer over. Wait for foam to subside, and stir together.
Bake for approx 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.
Watch entire loaf disappear.
* I have no idea why this isn't just "1 Tbsp baking powder"
The third time I made this, on Saturday, I mixed it in a bowl and greased (okkay, sprayed) the bread pan. I used a bottle of Schlitz. And once the dough was in the pan, I poured about a quarter cup of melted butter over the dough, so the crust wouldn't be very hard. I think the baking temperature is a bit low (or else the thermometer on our oven is off) but I've seen 375 F on some beer bread recipes, so I'll likely go a bit higher next time I do this.
The result? The baked loaf slid right out of the pan. And it tasted good. Good enough that despite taking it to the airport to give away, I probably still ate too much of it.
[ADDENDUM: 375 F for 45 minutes makes a better loaf. Less crumbly and no/less odd taste from the beer used.]
