Beer Bread

I promised the kids sourdough beer bread for dinner on Sunday night. After reading the directions from and

that arrived from The Book Depository on Friday afternoon I found out it would take several days to develop the sourdough starter.

So off to the  internet I went to find a beer bread that I could make by Sunday night. I started to look at some of the 185 000 results Google gave me and quickly worked out I wanted a yeast bread that used rye, whole wheat and unbleached white flours and the beer. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I decided this mixture would work (Fingers crossed and a quick prayer). It worked beautifully - the bread has a great crumb as you can see above, smells and tastes faintly of stout and malt. We agreed it is one of the nicest breads we've had for ages. A mature cheddar or some stilton would go perfectly with this bread or cream cheese and jam. I will be making it again with a honey malt beer.

Ingredients:

• 100 g mixed grain flakes
• 50 g ground oatmeal
• 200g white bread flour
• 200g whole wheat flour
• 100g dark rye flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tblsp. instant yeast 
• One stubby of room temperature Coopers Stout – 365 mls 
• 125 mls warm water

Method

•  Mix together the dry ingredients in a metal bowl.
• Stir in the beer and water with a spoon.
• Mix the dough for 5 minutes ( you can do this in the mixer because this is a wet sticky dough but I just used the spoon).

• Cover the bowl with cling wrap and let it rise for at least 1 hour.
• Next I took a bowl scraper and turned the dough back on itself with this. It punched down the dough really well and mixed it at the same time. Recover.  Let rise for at least 2 hours punching it down hourly then refrigerate it overnight. 

• Next day get it out of the refrigerator when you get up. Put the dough somewhere about 22° C to warm. I have a defrost setting on my oven and in the winter this is perfect for a slow prove. (Below is a photo of the dough after I took it out of the refrigerator).

• The dough should have doubled in size. Shape the dough and put it into an oiled bread loaf tin. (I didn't knock it back completely just handled it enough to get it shaped and into the tin)
• Put it somewhere warm. (You can use a plastic container big enough to hold the tin and a hot water bottle filled with boiling water)and when it has doubled in height put into a pre-heated oven 180°C
• When you put the dough into the oven, spray the oven surfaces with a mist of water, or throw in 2 or 3 ice cubes
• Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the crust is nicely browned.  Let stand for at least 15 minutes or ideally until cooled to room temperature. The bread smells so good you might have to leave the house to achieve this. 
•  The recommended temperature to cook bread is 200° C and if you haven't made bread before start at that temperature. My new fan forced oven seems to dry out the crust too much if I cook a loaf of bread at that temperature so I reduce the temperature to 180° C.