Beer Bread |Beer Bread Recipe | Eat the Love (2024)

Beer Bread Recipe with Semolina, Rosemary and Cheese

By Irvin Lin

Though is sounds odd, beer bread combines the flavor of a yeasted kneaded dough (the yeast coming from the bread) with quick batter bread like Irish Soda Bread. Once baked, you won’t taste the beer. Most beer bread is made with all-purpose flour, but if you go to the extra effort to get some specialty flours, specifically bread flour and semolina flour, you’ll be rewarded with a quick bread that is dinner party worthy. The bread flour gives the loaf of bread a nice dense chew not unlike a hearty homemade white sandwich bread while the semolina gives a slice crunch and helping to brown and crisp the crusty. You can find both flours at most grocery stores but if you can’t, you can use all-purpose in place of the bread four and cornmeal in place of the semolina. It won’t be exactly the same but it’ll still be darn good.

Adapted from a recipe in New Tastes of Texas by Stephan Pyles

Ingredients
1/4 cup (57 g or 1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
2 1/2 cups (400 g) bread flour (see note above)
1/2 cup (90 g) semolina flour (see note above)
2 tablespoons (25 g) white sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary (don’t used dried)
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
1/4 cup (25 g) finely grated hard cheese (like Parmigiano or Dubliner)
12 oz (1 standard bottle) beer (American pale lager works, nothing too fancy, this is beer bread)

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375˚F. Take a standard 9 x 5 inch bread loaf pan and brush about half the melted butter all over the bottom and side of the pans.

2. Place the flours, sugar, baking powder, rosemary, pepper, salt and cheese in medium bowl. Using a balloon whisk, stir vigorously together until all the ingredients are evenly distributed. Open the beer up and slowly pour it down the side of the bowl, trying not to create too much foam. Using a spatula, fold the beer into the dry ingredients but don’t overmix. You’ll want some lumpy dry patches in the dough (the more you mix it, the denser and tough the bread will be).

4. Scrape the dough into the prepared bread loaf pan. Pour the remaining melted butter over the dough, and brush the butter to cover the top of the dough. Place in the oven and bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the dough comes out clean. Remove from the oven, and let cool for 5 minutes. Then turn out into a wire rack and let cool completely before slicing and serving.

Makes 1 loaf of bread.