Confessions of a Carboholic

I'm a bread lover through and through. While my brother and two sisters insisted on having the crusts cut off from their slices of Wonder Bread, I not only had my slices intact. I would eat the end pieces of the loaf. When my Dad brought home a fresh rye bread from the deli, I'd go for the heels and eat the slices plain.

Then I learned how to make quick breads -- aptly named because you don't need to let them rise before baking. I've got a few quick breads in the Kitchen Guy Recipe Archive and this week's episode is actually a remake of an old episode we shot in standard definition at a location we used before we had our current Kitchen Guy kitchen.

I've used quick breads in cooking competitions as a device to catch the notice of the judges, because it's such an unexpected element -- especially when one must create 10 portions of four courses from a mystery basket of ingredients. Why would a "cheftestant" under that kind of pressure add something else to cook? By the way, that particular quick bread -- which a Master Chef actually asked me for the recipe -- was made with roasted garlic and black olives. Here's a link to that recipe.

But I digress. This week's quick bread uses the carnation and yeast contained in the beer to activate the leavening powers of baking powder in the self-rising bread. You can also use Bisquik. But if you have neither, just add 1-1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt to each cup of all-purpose flour. That's the "magic" formula.

It's important for the beer to be at room temperature. And I'm sorry to tell all of you Guinness fans out there, that dark beer just doesn't work. It's too fermented and too yeasty, not to mention thick.

The final addition of butter is also a critical element. Normally, a quick bread (think scones) has to be eaten while it's still warm out of the oven. But the addition of this melted butter near the end of the baking process made the loaf shown in this episode good for three more days, wrapped of course.

Here's the episode:


 

And here's the recipe:

3 cups self-rising flour
1/4 cup sugar
12 oz. room temperature beer
4 oz. unsalted butter, melted

Combine sugar with self-rising flour and mix well. Add the beer slowly and mix to form the batter. It's okay if it has lumps. Set it aside to rest while you pre-heat the oven to 350 and spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes. Remove the loaf from the oven and add the melted butter, using a table knife to pull the loaf away from the sides, so the butter gets into the bread.

Bake for an additional 5 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool. When it's cool enough to handle, but still warm, remove from the pan, slice and serve.