A Bonnetful of Bees

For a variety of perfectly good reasons, I neglected to put the Dutch Oven bread on to rise last night and breakfast saw the last of my bread disappear as toast.

I thought about my Beer Bread recipe, an hour from thinking about it to eating it, but my memory of it was not quite what I wanted.  I have been enjoying the taste and texture of the Dutch Oven Bread so much I wasn’t ready to settle for less.  Out of the inner tantrum came a thought.  What would happen if I mixed up a batch of Beer Bread, and cooked it the way I do the Dutch Oven Bread?

I wiped the inside of the  cast iron casserole with cooking oil, and set it in the cold oven to heat up, not to my usual 220C as for Dutch Oven Bread, but to 170C, which is just a touch above my usual Beer Bread temperature.

I then combined in a bowl the following :

1.5 cups hi-grade white flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons salt
0.75 teaspoons bruised caraway seed (not essential but I like the flavour)
1 x 375ml bottle of home brewed stout.

(You can probably use a stubby or can of any beer plus a little water to make up the volume to 375ml.  The beer selected contributes to the final flavour.  A lager produces a more delicate flavour.)

Stir this around with a wooden spoon until it is combined. It’s a “wetter” dough than ordinary bread, but should be just coming away from the edge of the bowl when it’s properly mixed up.

When the oven reaches temperature, take out the cast iron pot, place the bread mix inside and replace the lid, and put it back in the oven for 40 minutes. (If you like you can take a moment to sprinkle a few sesame seeds or sunflower seeds on top of the sticky dough before it goes into the oven.)

At this point, remove the lid from the casserole and cook the bread for another 10-15 minutes. Turn it out onto a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes.  The bottom should sound hollow when you tap it.

The crust is exactly like the Dutch Oven Bread and the flavour is everything you could want.  I’d defy most people to tell that this was a baking powder bread.  The texture is much more open and chewy than usual, and very like the Dutch oven bread. Excellent with a savoury or sweet topping or just with butter.

As it happened, I’d made up a robust ox-liver pate while the bread was doing its thing.  No need at all for butter. Wonderful.