Beer Bread

I told you we were making beer bread to go with yesterday’s Guinness Beef Stew and here she is!  Soft and tender inside (like me), with a salty, golden-brown BUTTERY crust (also like me)…this is the perfect beer bread recipe!My mom used to make beer bread often when I was growing up and I could consume more than I’m proud to admit.  Her version came from Tastefully Simple, which was all the rage with moms back in my high school days.  I never actually knew you could make a homemade version until I got older…to me, beer bread had to come out of a box, where beer and butter was all that was needed to have a loaf of semi-homemade bread baking in your oven!

This beer bread recipe is super simple to whip up, with only 8 ingredients.  Technically, you could get by without the brown sugar and flaky sea salt, to make it a 5-ingredient recipe (excluding kosher salt), but I really like what they bring to the party.  Honey and brown sugar add sweetness to this bread; I like to use a wheat beer because it adds more yeasty flavor to the bread.  It never hurts when a recipe has a whole stick of butter stuffed into it too, right?  Two tablespoons are melted and folded into the batter, and the remaining six tablespoons are cut up and arranged on top, to melt and “fry” the outside of the bread.  That’s what gives it that perfect crisp, shaggy, golden crust that beer bread is known for.Is this on your St. Patty’s Day menu?!  If not, it should be!  Or just make it tonight for dinner…it might quickly become your new go-to side dish recipe for just about any meal!

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