Goose Island Bread

This bread won't win any beauty contests but it tasted like heaven straight out of the oven. I came across the recipe for Fat Tire Beer Bread over on Cookie Madness. This is a quick bread that uses beer as the leavening agent. Everyone and their brother must be making it because when I went to the grocery store, they were completely out of Fat Tire Beer.

I looked around and settled on a brew called Goose Island Harvest Ale. Goose Island Brewery is based out of Chicago and the Harvest Ale is only available from August though November. Why not enjoy something seasonal and local?! The Harvest Ale gave the bread a hint of light fruity sweetness. I think you could use any kind of beer in this recipe and the bread would be fantastic.

The recipe says you should use a metal bread pan, but my large bread pan is glass. I checked my bread at about 40 minutes. I could have taken it out at that point, but I wanted the crust to be a bit darker. I was satisfied with the color after the loaf had been baking for 50 minutes.

The crust was super crispy right out of the oven. Sadly, the bread lost that crispy crust once it had cooled. The room temperature bread was also quite difficult to cut in thin slices. No one complained their bread was sliced too thickly though.

Fat Tire Beer Bread from Cookie Madness
3 cups sifted all purpose flour (I used 12.15 oz)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 (12 ounce) bottle beer
5 tablespoons melted unsalted butter plus more for greasing dish

Preheat oven to 375 . Rub a 9×5" metal loaf pan with about a tablespoon of butter.
Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add beer, stir until mixed (about 30 strokes), then dump mixture into the loaf pan. Pour melted butter over the top. Bake 1 hour, remove from pan and cool for at least 15 min.