Round Sixteen — Organic Beer Bread

It’s a beautiful thing when healthy, tasty and quick-and-easy all come together to form a bread. Elliott happened upon this beer bread recipe while visiting the Planet Green Web site and, seeing as he loves all things organic, and beer, and organic beer, I was immediately informed of his find and was asked — nay, implored — to make this loaf on his behalf.



It didn’t take much convincing — after all, the recipe calls for what? SIX ingredients? Most of which (with the exception of organic beer) were sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be used? Well, if you insist, dear husband, I think I can manage to lift these arms of mine and make you some bread in 30 minutes flat.

Truth is, it was harder to find the organic flour than it was to make this recipe. We found the beer (Samuel Smith’s Organic Lager) at our favorite local wine store (Wine Knows… so clever), but when it came to finding organic wheat flour and organic bread flour, it was a lost cause. We were dumbfounded and, quite frankly, disappointed by our misfortune. It’s been a tough go of this “food revolution” we’re on ’round these parts, but I guess you just have to move on. So I substituted the organic flours for the ones I already had stored on my counter.

At first, I was mildly skeptical of the idea that the beer alone would do the job of causing the bread to rise, but apparently the yeast is inherently in the beer itself, which allows the dough to rise in the oven (and thus makes it a “quick bread”). I’ve seen it with my own eyes, too, because the batter was flat prior to going in the oven and, when the bread was done, it was fluffier and rounded on the top. Who knew?

I’m not sure how I feel about the consistency of the bread. As it is considered a quick bread, it’s quite dense and moist, almost like a banana bread. To some, this may be a turnoff, but I think it makes the bread more robust and refined. And, if you’re still wary, maybe knowing that the recipe only calls for 1 1/2 cups of beer, leaving the rest to disappear down your gullet at 10 a.m. on a Sunday (What? We didn’t do that…), may change your mind. Bottoms up, my friends.

Debrief: The downside to this recipe is the lack of a specific answer when it comes to how long the bread will take to bake. I put mine in for 15 minutes, then another 7, then another 5 before it passed the “doneness test” for quick breads (clean toothpick, etc.). Still, I think I was a little overzealous in taking the bread out of the oven, because the loaf was a tad sticky. This may just be a condition of its moistness. The upside to this recipe, however, was the Samuel Smith beer (a recommendation from the recipe’s site) — definitely a keeper.

Organic Beer Bread
Courtesy of Planet Green (Recipe adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

1 cup organic whole wheat flour
1 cup organic bread flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp sea salt
1 ½ cups organic beer

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan.
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Add beer.
4. Fold just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly.
5. Bake until inserted toothpick comes out clean.
6. Let cool in the pan placed on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.

Extra punches: I’ve learned from multiple sources that it’s best to use the lightest beer possible for this recipe as it adds to the yeasty, beer-y taste, whereas darker beers tend to leave the bread bitter. So save the Guinness for drinking and use a lighter lager for the bread.

Round Fifteen — Ridiculously Easy Pizza Dough

In our continuing quest for good, vegetarian-friendly grub, the husband and I decided to make ourselves a homemade margherita pizza, with our own flair (queso fresco instead of mozzarella, plus some spinach… I’d say it was a result of culinary innovation, but really it was because we had nothing else in the fridge). I’ve always hated the buttery taste of store-bought pizza doughs, so I searched for a healthy, easy pizza dough recipe, as I’ve been longing to make my own pie base for quite some time now. Leave it to my handy dandy Food Network Magazine to come through in the clutch with a pullout section for what? Pizza. Schwing.

The recipe was so short it fit within the confines of a 3/4-by-2-inch box in the center of a list of 50 pizza recipes, and despite the gashes in my current food supply I had all of the ingredients necessary for not one, nay, but TWO pounds of pizza dough. My stars!

The original recipe calls for all-purpose flour alone, but in an effort to make a healthier dough I incorporated 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour with 2 cups all-purpose (I could have tipped the scales more in favor of whole wheat, but at the risk of make a super-tough dough I declined this time). In a matter of minutes the dough was ready for kneading, and my wonderful husband decided to take a stab (or a fist) at kneading for the first time (I guess he had a lot of stress to release).

After the dough doubled (which took just about 1 1/2 hours, per the recipe), we separated the mass in half and reserved one pound in the fridge for the next day, leaving one pound to spread thin, thin, thin across a 15-inch round pizza stone (also from Food Network — psh, what are the ODDS?)

We smeared on olive oil and crushed tomatoes; sprinkled a smattering of dried oregano, salt and pepper; and topped it off with crumbled cheese and torn spinach leaves. Into the oven for 15 minutes (barely) and bellissimo! That’s amore.

Seriously, if you’re salivating over these pictures (which you should be, because this pizza was ah-mazing), grab these ingredients out of your cabinets (or cupboards, if you are a gnome and live under a thatched roof) and get to business. It’ll be easier than poaching an egg! (I know, because I did just that this weekend.)

Debrief: This was certainly an inspirational recipe, to say the least, in the sense that it got me thinking about so many different kinds of pizzas I could make with this simple dough. Maybe a breakfast pizza or fruit pizza is in my near future.

Pizza Dough
Courtesy of Food Network Magazine

Whisk 3 3/4 cups flour and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Make a well and add 1 1/3 cups warm water, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 packet yeast. When foamy, mix in 3 tablespoons olive oil; knead until smooth, 5 minutes. Brush with olive oil, cover in a bowl and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Divide into two 1-pound balls. Use 1 pound per recipe (unless you want to make a thicker crust, deep-dish or a stuffed pizza… in which case follow the recipes on Food Network).

Extra punches: Really, you can make any pizza your little heart desires using this dough. It’s mild enough that it can be topped with anything from tomato sauce to barbecue sauce to hummus to yogurt. Go crazy! And send me the recipes.