I love fresh-baked bread (who doesn’t?) but I don’t have it often because it usually takes a long time to make between the rising and the kneading. When I’m in a hurry for some homemade goodness, though, I use my foolproof three-ingredient bread recipe that requires no kneading and takes only a few minutes to prepare. That’s right… three ingredients and no kneading!
Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
- 2 2/3 cups self-rising flour *
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 12-oz bottle of beer
* If you do not have self-rising flour, you can use 2 2/3 cups regular flour and add 4 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt.
Stir all ingredients together in a bowl until blended and pour the batter into a lightly greased loaf pan
For a crunchy crust, serve right away. For a softer crust (better for sandwiches), place in a plastic bag overnight, then serve.
Here are some variations you can use:
- For a kid-friendly baking lesson, you can use soda pop instead of beer and the bread will still work (although I have to say that the beer tastes a LOT better).
- You can use any kind of beer you like, depending on your tastes. I’ve used light and dark beers with success.
- If you’d like a sweeter bread (more suitable to breakfast or a snack), you can increase the sugar up to 1/2 cup.
This is a great recipe for a quick and easy bread. It’s also very inexpensive to make (about 25 cents worth of ingredients, not counting the beer). It also just so happens to be all but identical to the “Bountiful Beer Bread” sold by the “Tastefully Simple” line of foods. If you happen to be a fan of their products, save yourself $5 next time and just make your own Bountiful Beer Bread at home.
I have tried this bread with Blue Moon and Negro Modello beer, both of which gave fantastic results. I have also tried with Coca-Cola (which nobody liked) and Sprite (which the kids liked but I didn’t). I want to try it soon with root beer, because I think that might work really well. Please share your results if you try this at home; I’d love to hear which drinks work (or don’t) for you!
12 comments so far:
You need to follow up and let us know how the root beer bread turns out. If it’s good, I think I’ll have a new favorite! Root beer… yum. (BTW, if you intend this as a “dessert” bread, I’d recommend Abita: lots of flavor and sweetened with sugar instead of corn syrup.)
Here are some variations:
Fancy Fox Gift Baskets
Balter Catalogue
Gourmet Cupboard
My favorite is “pizza bread” with cut up pieces of pepperoni and either mozzarella or feta cheese with spaghetti sauce as a dip.
Pfirsh, I tried making the pizza bread with my toddler and she LOVES it!
Jo,
I’m glad she liked it! The first time I made it, my ex-boyfriend’s roommate said that I should make it again.
Other things I’ve tried are basil and oregano (about 1/2 Tbsp each) with only 1 tsp sugar. You may like it sweeter, but I don’t don’t know how well they will work together. Cut up sun-dried tomatoes are also a nice addition.
Beer bread! Love it! The first time I had it the mix came in a box. Thanks for the recipe. Now I don’t need to go find that boxed version any more.
I tried some bread made with cheap A&W root beer. Others commented that it didn’t have much flavor, and what little it had was more like cola than root beer.
My take: the bread was bland when I first tried it. Nice root beer aroma, good bread taste, but not much root beer flavor.
When I toasted and spread some butter on it, though, it was quite tasty! The root beer flavor really came through, especially in the crust.
I’m definitely going to try it again, but I’ll use one of the premium root beers that have vanilla/honey — I’ll bet the root beer flavor comes through then!
So, I had cheap beer (Busch Light) in my fridge and I was afraid of what it would taste like, but it was great! Especially warm right out of the oven. I never knew it was so easy to make this. So excited.
Scot, that sounds pretty neat, we’ll have to try it sometime. Thanks for sharing your results.
Ruth, I’m glad you were able to turn cheap beer into a delight
I have some Pumpkin Ale, gonna try this out with that!! Hope it works!
I tried dr. pepper and it had a good flavor but it seemed like 50-55 min wasnt nearly enough. It was still gooey on the bottom.
I’ll bet Dr Pepper gave it a really unique flavor, Derek. Thanks for sharing your suggesting about the cooking time!