It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No! It's Beer Bread!

   I recently made some bread from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. There is a plethora of recipes in there, but one kind of bread is conspicuously missing from their book- beer bread. I love beer, and I love the beers that the fall season brings- the Octoberfests and the pumpkin ales.

   After a little trial and error, I finally came up with a modification to their basic recipe. Most beer breads I've seen are soft loafs that you pour into a loaf pan and bake. But I'm in the market for a crusty loaf, akin to the ones I often make. I started with that recipe for Basic Bread to make my modifications.

   The first batch I tried by replacing half the water with beer. Conveniently, a 12 oz bottle of beer is 1 1/2 cups of liquid- precisely half of the water in the original recipe. I also reduced the yeast by half. The beer flavor was very mild in the resulting bread, and it didn't rise quite as much as it should have. This means I needed more beer, and a little bit more yeast. Another batch was made with these changes, and the result was breaded beery goodness.

Beer Bread
adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
makes 4, 1lb loafs

What You'll Need:
2, 12oz room temp bottles of beer, I used and Irish Red.
2 tsp granulated yeast
1 Tbs salt
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
a large container, preferably with a lid

The Process:
   When selecting a beer, just remember this is where you'll get almost all the flavor. If paring it with a meal, choose a beer that will go well with your meal. I chose an Irish Red because I like that style a lot. Also keep in mind that the beer has to be room temp in order to get the yeast to activate correctly.

Civil War Era Chocolate Pudding

 Today is going to start a new little segment called Test Kitchen Tuesday. I talk quite a bit about recipes I've had to work on several times to get right, but I only post the final recipe. I thought it might be interesting to talk about the process I go through while working things out. In the spirit of that, I decided to start with a recipe that immediately needed some changes.

A dear friend of mine works at a Civil War museum and each week they post a recipe from the period. This past week's sounded not only delicious, but also something I could readily make. It was a baked chocolate pudding. Our great-great-grandmothers weren't quite the sticklers we are for measurements, so at the very least I needed to translate the ingredients into modern measurements.

 The recipe I worked with was as follows:

Have the best and strongest American chocolate or cocoa. Baker’s prepared cocoa will be found excellent for all chocolate purposes; better indeed than anything else, as it is pure, and without any adulteration of animal fat, being also very strong, and communicating a high flavor. Of this, scrape down, very fine, two ounces or more. Add to it a tea-spoonful of mixed spice, namely, powdered nutmeg and cinnamon. Put it into a very clean sauce-pan, and pour on a quart of rich milk, stirring it well. Set it over the fire, or on hot coals; cover it; and let it come to a boil. Then remove the lid; stir up the chocolate from the bottom, and press out all lumps. Then return it to the fire, and when thoroughly dissolved and very smooth, it is done. Next stir in, gradually, while the chocolate is still boiling-hot, a quarter of a pound or more of powdered loaf-sugar. If you use such white sugar as is bought ready powdered, you must have near half a pound, as that sugar has very little strength, being now adulterated with ground starch. When the chocolate is well sweetened, set it away to cool. Beat eight eggs very light, and pour them through a strainer into the pan of chocolate, when it is quite cold. Stir the whole very hard. Then put it into the oven, and bake it well. Try it when you think it done, with a twig from a broom. If on putting the twig into the middle of the pudding, and sticking it quite down to the bottom, the twig comes out clean, and with nothing clammy adhering to it, the pudding is then sufficiently baked. It should be eaten cold. Sift white sugar thickly over it before it goes to the table. It will be found very nice.
This pudding will bake best by sitting the pan in a dutch oven half-filled with boiling water.

From: Leslie, Eliza. Miss Leslie's Lady's New Receipt-book: A Useful Guide for Large or Small Families : Containing Directions for Cooking, Preserving, Pickling. Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey & Hart, 1850. Pg. 127-128

 The first step I took was to write out each of the ingredients in a list, as we do now, and translate their quantities to measurements we use now. I didn't know, without looking it up, that 1lb of sugar is equal to two cups. So, a quarter pound of sugar is half a cup. At this stage, I also made the executive decision to add a little vanilla to the recipe.