Making Homemade Bread (includes recipe)

Making Homemade Bread

For most people, when they need more bread, it’s time for a trip to the store. And if they have special likes or dislikes, it could mean trips to several stores to get the right bread. If their favorite store doesn’t have their favorite bread, then what? They are out of luck! This could have described me, until the pandemic of 2020 started.

I remember going to my local grocery store in early 2020, and I had a few items on my list which included tortillas. Typically the shelves on one of the aisle end-caps contained piles of various types and sizes of tortillas; easily a hundred or more packages. Imagine my surprise when I zipped around the corner and saw there were only a few bedraggled options left. My favorites were totally gone. And the bread aisle was low as well. And right around that time, yeast was hard to find. Ugh, bread is one staple I’d like to be able to get at all times…

So, what did I do? I started hunting for bread recipes and solutions. The results were all edible but not great. I also tried making sourdough starter but consistently had trouble getting it to work properly. And then late in 2021, I saw someone in my area was offering free dehydrated sourdough starter and I jumped at the chance to have sourdough starter that worked. Well, I received the envelope, followed the directions for rehydration, and within a day I had working sourdough starter. Whoo hoo!

And with that starter, I began making bread using the recipes on this website. I’ve tried “cabin bread” which are loaves of somewhat dense bread that is great with pasta. I’ve made ciabatta which is amazing for paninis when it is made long and thin. It’s also great for ciabatta french toast when made fatter. I’ve made empanada wraps, pizza dough (I like my regular homemade dough better), muffins and more, all from that small package of dehydrated sourdough starter.

Not content to stop there, though, I have tried some other bread recipes as well.

What I have found is that most bread making requires kneading, patience, and lots of time. You really need to plan on staying home for 3-4 hours to make it.

That being said, I found an extremely easy bread to make which is very tasty. No kneading and no patience required. The bread would probably go great with soup, chili, chowder, or perhaps as toast with eggs. Well, quite frankly, maybe it would go well with everything! And you can whip it up and throw it in the oven in only a minute or two.

Because it is so simple, I thought I’d share the recipe which I originally found on Food.com. Here it is!

Beer Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder*
• 1 tsp salt*
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 12 ounces beer
• 1/2 cup melted butter

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375º.
• Mix dry ingredients and beer
• Pour into a greased loaf pan
• Pour melted butter over mixture
• Bake 1 hour, remove from pan and cool for at least 15 minutes

Notes:

1. * If you use self-rising flour, omit the baking powder and salt.
2. This makes a very hearty bread with a crunchy, buttery crust. If you want a softer crust, mix the butter into the batter instead of pouring on top (ps, the crunchy part is the best!)
3. I used brown ale, but any kind of beer should work.

Good luck! If you try it, let me know what you think! I’m reachable at kat@thehousekat.com and on 406-270-3667.