The spring of the moot

Pfft. You need an excuse? :) It’s like Everest, I eat it because it’s there…

The beer bread is 3 cups of white flour, 3 tsp of baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp of salt, 3/4 tsp of baking soda, 2 tbl of sugar. Mix it all up. Add a bottle of beer and stir til you get a nearly intractable mass of dough. Squash it into a loaf pan. (I use ale, usually; I don’t recommend using a wheat-based beer, as the additional tiny bit of gluten in it transforms the dough from a sticky yet handleable blob into a combative alien life form.)

Now, the part that makes it so good yet so painful (especially for you, I’m afraid.) Melt a half stick of butter–I guess that’s 1/8 lb? 4 tbl?–and pour it over the top of the dough. Then bake it at 350 for 20 minutes. Meanwhile melt the other half of the butter stick; at 20 minutes, pull the bread out and dump the rest of the butter over it, and bake it another 25 minutes. Glorious.

Happy 4th to you too! Fireworks a’plenty going off here, I got quite the show as I was driving home from the cookout.

Yeah, I don’t do yeast. (which is to say, I never yet have.) The only breads I know how to make are soda bread and beer bread, since they acquire their leavening from other sources. I also do pretty good buttermilk biscuits and cinnamon scones… :)

Will look forward to seeing your version. Mine is damn good, but it’s pretty indulgent; I try not to make it too often or I’d be courting a coronary. Sadly I still had half the loaf left over from the party–looks like it’s beer bread for breakfast the next few days.

Do yeast, she says. Like it was the simplest thing in the world. Look, I fear yeast, OK? You get it too hot or too cold and it up and dies; then I have both bad bread, and guilt.

I’ll make you a deal. You steer me to the most basic, simplest, you’d-have-to-be-a-real-idiot-to-screw-this-one-up yeast-bearing recipe in your repertoire, and I give you my solemn word I will try it. After I’ve recovered from the beer bread, that is… :)

I await your recommendation great anticipation. Also with fear and trembling. :)

I’m not cold blooded at all, I like it warm and humid (which explains how I’ve managed to live in the midwest for the last 16 years without air conditioning.) Perhaps the yeast and I can come to some sort of detente…

Heh. My recipe for beer bread is even simpler. I got it from a bachelor customer at the bookstore where I was working after I got married. It calls for 3 cups self-rising flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and 12 ounces of beer. You just mix all the ingredients together until it’s one gloppy mass, dump it into a well-greased loaf pan, and bake at 375 degrees F for 45 minutes. We tend to add chopped nuts and dried fruit (usually raisins, but sometimes just whatever I have at hand) into it. It’s a heavy bread, but with great texture, character, and flavor. I’ve been making this recipe for about 30 years.

Lola has spent a lot of time under the bed these past few days. OR under the computer desk where my feet go.