Help me welcome my husband, Jason, today. This isn’t his first time writing for the Saucy Dipper, but it is one of the best things he’s made yet.
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Here’s a nice little beer cheese bread recipe I stole from Alton Brown of Good Eats (see the original recipe). Here’s how I made it, some photos, and some other notes.
A couple of items:
First, I went off book a little and substituted 1/2 teaspoon of dry dill for 1 tsp of fresh dill. This may have dried things out a bit.
Second, I used Belgian Ale. It has a pretty strong flavor to begin with, and then mixing it into cheese bread takes that flavor to another level – this bread tastes a lot like beer. If you want a milder, more bread flavor, I’d suggest using a mild light beer.
Ingredients
Directions
A note about alcohol
Most of the alcohol in the beer will bake out, but not all of it – something like 5-20% of the original alcohol will remain after one hour of baking (the range is indefinite mostly because I’ve never seen anything super-scientific in terms of alcohol and baking…if you know of an exact guide somewhere, please drop a link in the comments). However, since it’s easy to get 10 slices of bread out of this loaf, and if you figure all but 10% of the original alcohol remains, than we’re talking 1/10th of 10%…or that each slice contains about 1% of the alcohol in one beer. SO, don’t worry about it.
Serving Suggestions
As you can imagine, beer cheese bread tastes great alongside a beer, but it also compliments Sara’s beer cheese dip quite nicely.
Cheese Dip Recipe
Directions: Mix all ingredients. Go easy on the ranch seasoning. Add too much and the dip will be too salty. Chill for two hours before serving. (Good with bread and with Fritos.)
Enjoy!
Wow, that bread sounds way too good! Like rarebit, but it’s all a part of the bread itself. So, the only leavening is from the beer? No baking powder or yeast?
Never mind – reread the recipe. 😛
It was good! Easy to miss the details.
I first made beer bread when I moved to Colorado; as a matter of fact the recipe is called Coors Beer Bread and I just did it as called for many, many times.
I’m not really a beer drinker so it wasn’t made often but one day after having some friends over I found myself with a couple of bottles of different beers in the fridge and made it with a darker beer…and that started something; now I love to experiment. This sounds great, particularly with the addition of some cheese.
I don’t drink beer, but love the baked goods made with them. The bread looks splendid.
Hi Sara! It was lovely meeting you yesterday at the sausage tasting and it is even lovelier meeting your blog!! I love your logo and the Beer Bread sounds like something the Brit (aka my hubby) would love. I think it would be fun to try with some of the flavored beers like Chili or Cardamon….hmmm. Cheers!
This sounds like a bread I would love to eat!! Great post!
And Thank you for the cute lil card!
This looks soooo good. I haven’t had beer bread since I lived in OHIO! Soo thrilled to see this recipe. Brings back great memories. 🙂
I love beer bread. This version looks so good. With the addition of dill it kind of reminds me of Pillsbury’s Dilly Bread. It won the bake off many years ago but is so darned good too. The dip sounds great.
I think The Walnut Brewery in Boulder has the best beer bread – well, second best. Jason did pretty good on this one.
Awwww…
I finally had a chance to make it. OMG!!! Keeping in mind your note about it being dry, I added 1/4 C milk. Took an extra 5 minutes to bake, but it is very light for a quick bread. I also used a can of Light beer (no clue how it got in the house), and the beer flavor is more balanced with the cheese. All-in-all, a definite winner!