A glass of beer pairs well with many things: An evening out with friends, a backyard barbecue, cheering on your favorite team, a warm summer's day, or a chilly winter's night. But if you limit the beverage's function to merely tasty hydration, it's time to step into the kitchen and explore beer's full potential — because the libation takes bread to a whole new level. The carbonation and yeast in the beer react with the baking powder and flour in the dough to act as a leavening agent, so the beer in the batter produces a moist texture and extra rise in the resulting bread. Beer bread is a simple recipe that yields a savory, chewy, soft, and pleasantly dense loaf.
However, if you're not careful, this quick and simple dough can turn too dense very quickly, and the bread will exit the oven disagreeably heavy with no trace of the desired moistness. Luckily, if you encounter this problem every time you break out the beer and the batter, there is an easy fix for your next loaf: Watch how much you're working it. Overworking the dough of your beer bread will affect the texture, causing it to turn from soft and chewy to tough and condensed.
Beer bread is simple and doesn't require the same kneading as other bread recipes. In fact, for beer bread, the mixing should be minimal — which can be a challenge of its own. For many types of bread, over-kneading is fairly uncommon if you're kneading by hand because you can feel when the dough is becoming tough under your fingers. Kneading forms the protein molecules that create the gluten strands that allow the bread to rise. But when you do it too long, the liquid molecules are harmed, and rather than being stretchy, the dough becomes stiff and begins to tear. If you bake an overworked dough, it will come out hard.
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Even though you aren't kneading beer bread, the same principle applies. It can be harder to tell when the dough is overworked, though, since you won't feel it in your hands and the mixture isn't supposed to be smooth. Instead, rely on your eyes. To avoid too much mixing, it's best to combine the beer with the dry ingredients only until they are just incorporated. You want to make sure that no pockets of flour are visible, but as soon as the flour is gone, it's time to stop working it. For a bread like this, electric mixers can cause more harm than good. Since they mix so quickly, the batter could be over-mixed before you realize it — so rely on a spoon and elbow grease.
Choosing The Best Beer For Your Perfectly Mixed Beer Bread
Beer's yeast and carbonation content are what make it an easy bread leavening agent — but the style will come down more to your own personal preference for the flavor and color of beer you want to be incorporated into your bread. If you're looking for a deep brown color and a coffee and chocolate flavor, then Guinness will be the best choice for beer bread. You will find a delicious richness in the stout that stands out in both color and taste.
Lighter beers won't be as flavorful, but they can still be a good choice if you're going for subtlety in the flavor profile. Very hoppy beers can be flavor-forward, but as long as the bitter hops appeal to you (and the crowd you're feeding), they can be a delicious choice. Since beer bread has such a basic recipe, it's easy to add extra ingredients like herbs or cheese or even something sweet like cranberries — so if you're experimenting with additions, that can also affect the beer you're mixing in.
To avoid too much mixing, it's best to combine the beer with the dry ingredients only until they are just incorporated. You want to make sure that no pockets of flour are visible, but as soon as the flour is gone, it's time to stop working it.
Luckily, if you encounter this problem every time you break out the beer and the batter, there is an easy fix for your next loaf: Watch how much you're working it. Overworking the dough of your beer bread will affect the texture, causing it to turn from soft and chewy to tough and condensed.
There may be several reasons for a dense, cake like texture in bread. It may indicate the kneading wasn't enough for the gluten to develop properly, or the dough was proved for too short a time or the dough may have been too dry. It is also worth checking the flour you used.
Cause: typical of too much flour (or other dry ingredients) or not enough liquid; less often a result of too little yeast, too little sugar, too much salt, or old ingredients. Here's what you can try doing to improve your loaf: Reduce your flour* or increasing your liquids.
Beer has rising agent in it already, but most store-bought beer will not have enough of it to make the bread rise; for this, most beer bread recipes include baking powder, which reacts with the beer to lets the bread rise and develop air pockets.
Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.
Therefore, the density is mostly a measure of the amount of water contained within a beer. A beer with a higher percentage of water will have a correspondingly lower density. These changes are not necessarily connected directly to the amount of water added. Changes in moisture content of malts can also alter density.
Strong flour has more protein and gluten and gives an overall heavier feel to the bread, both in weight and texture/taste. If you are already using strong flour consider using less yeast, this will cause the bread to rise less and be heavier, but this may make the taste and texture less pleasant.
The fat and lactose in milk help with tenderizing the crumb of the bread making it softer and sweeter. The crust of the bread also gets more caramelization. Be aware that bread made with milk should not be baked at too high of a temperature to prevent it from browning too much too soon.
Most bread machine manuals and cookbooks call for bread flour rather than all-purpose flour. King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, because it's higher in gluten than national brands of all-purpose flour, works perfectly in the bread machine.
Air circulating around the loaf allows the steam built up inside the bread to evaporate. If the bread is kept in its baking pan, it will become soggy and look and taste doughy. If the bread has not finished baking by the maximum time indicated in the recipe, the oven thermostat may be off.
Instant yeast is the only yeast I ever use in my baking. Always have and always will. The yeast of choice in most restaurant kitchens and commercial bakeries, it's easy and convenient.
Lighter beers, such as lagers, ales and pilsners, will give your bread a lighter color, and mild taste that just about everyone loves. Darker beers like stouts and porters make a darker-colored loaf and have a stronger beer flavor. Hoppy beers like IPAs will give your bread a more bitter taste.
Bake the bread for 45 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted about 1/2" into the top of the loaf comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs clinging to it.
Without sufficient leavening from the beer, a loaf of beer bread will be fairly dense and heavy unless an additional leavening agent (e.g., baking soda, baking powder, baker's yeast and sugar, sourdough starter, or wild yeast cultured from the environment) is added.
Adding dry milk powder to your bread dough will help your loaf rise higher. In addition, the loaf will stay soft and hold moisture longer which again means it will last longer. It also helps brown the crust. If you want a lighter fluffier bread loaf just add 2 Tbsp of dry milk to the flour per loaf of your bread.
Additionally, in stone grinding, the delicate healthy fats in the wheat are not damaged since the heat is absorbed by the stone rather than into the wheat berries. However, since bran is high in fiber (as well as other nutrients), using stone ground flour produces a denser loaf.
The reason why whole wheat loaves end up so dense is because whole wheat flour has very little gluten as compared to white all-purpose flour. Gluten is important for giving the dough – and final loaves – structure. Without it, loaves tend to end up flat and dense.
Introduction: My name is Chrissy Homenick, I am a tender, funny, determined, tender, glorious, fancy, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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