Beer Around Town

I’ve had some requests of late to post up my bread recipe, so I thought I would finally get around to it. Although it’s not exactly beer, it goes really well with beer, so it shall have a spot on this blog. I’m going to break the article up into two parts since this method sort of requires two days, but I promise, it’s easy and cheap.

What you need:

1 Cast Iron Dutch Oven – My pot is enamel on cast iron (pictured above, ghetto I know), but regular cast iron works fine. It needs to be able to handle 450 degrees for about an hour, so make sure it doesn’t have a plastic handle or anything that will melt. You need one about 4 Qts in size.

1/4 tsp of Rapid Rise (Bread Machine) yeast – I use some Fleischmann’s stuff that I picked up for a few bucks, this will last you years.

3 cups flour – Go for some unbleached white bread flour, I use Bob’s Red Mill. You can also experiment with Whole Wheat, I recommend a 50/50 white/wheat blend if you do, whole wheat is much denser.

2 tsp sea salt – You can use kosher salt or even table salt if you want, maybe up it a tad for table salt.

1.25 cups hot water – Just as hot as your sink will go, no need to get technical in temps on this.

Some fixins for the inside – Anything or nothing will do here, my favorites are jalapenos and cheddar, fire-roasted red peppers, olives, herbs, anything goes, be creative.

The bread I am making in the photos from now on is a fire-roasted red pepper and cave aged Guyere that I picked up on sale at the store this week, I also added a touch of basil and black pepper. The photo of the ingredients above was from a previous batch with Jalapenos, but it shows the ingredients well and I forgot to take a picture of the ingredients of this one. The peppers and cheese get added in day 2, so don’t worry about not seeing them on here today.

As far as a timeline, the bread needs about 12-14 hours for it’s initial rise, what I usually do is start the bread at night, then when I get home from work the next day I finish the process, this method requires no kneading and produces really fluffy bread with a nice crisp crust… but the sacrifice is it does take a while to do it’s thing, so less work but more time. I’ll put an artificial time-line on it since I tend to ramble and confuse things.

Step 1(Tuesday 8:00pm) – Mix the 3 cups flour, 1/4 tsp yeast, and 2 tsp salt in a mixing bowl. You can also add any herbs you want at this step. Mix the dry ingredients together.

Step 2 (Tuesday 8:03pm)- Add the hot water in slowly while stirring. You are trying to get a sticky ball of dough, not soup, but not a dry lump either, it should still stick to the spoon. If it is still to dry add a bit more water, to wet add flour.

Step 3 (Tuesday 8:05pm)- Cover the bowl with a dishtowel and let it sit till tomorrow (about 12-14 hours). The bread should about double in size during this first rise

Wow, day 1 is already done, 5 minutes of work in total, fricken sweet, have a beer.

Go to Day 2