Honey Beer Bread Recipe | Gimme Some Oven (2024)

FAQs

What kind of beer makes the best beer bread? ›

Lighter beers, such as lagers, ales and pilsners, will give your bread a lighter color, and mild taste that just about everyone loves. Darker beers like stouts and porters make a darker-colored loaf and have a stronger beer flavor. Hoppy beers like IPAs will give your bread a more bitter taste.

Luckily, if you encounter this problem every time you break out the beer and the batter, there is an easy fix for your next loaf: Watch how much you're working it. Overworking the dough of your beer bread will affect the texture, causing it to turn from soft and chewy to tough and condensed.

Honey helps extend the shelf life of baked goods, which in particular is important for loaves of bread that need to stay fresh and moist. Honey is a humectant, a substance that prevents moisture transfer in bakery foods. Honey does not give up water easily; in fact, it collects moisture from the atmosphere.

If you add baking soda to a quick bread, the gas bubbles it releases into the batter lifts your bread. When the combination of baking soda and acid combines with heat, proteins in the batter (like eggs) turn rigid. The rigid structure traps the gas and results in a light, fluffy texture.

In very simple terms, there are two predominant yeasts used in brewing; Saccharomyces cerveisiae or ale yeast, and Saccharomyces pastorianus or lager yeast. Ale yeast works best at room temperature (18-22°C or 64-71°F) and produces the slightly 'fruity' characteristics that you would expect in many ales.

Beer has yeast, but it doesn't always have enough to make the bread rise on its own. Craft brews sometimes leave the live yeast in (it forms a sort of sediment in the bottle), but mass-produced beers usually filter it out. If you relied on just the beer for rising, it might come out too dense.

Well it's simple, bread flour has an increased amount of protein or more gluten which results in a lighter, fluffier dough which produces a less dense finished product. All-purpose flour can be used for bread but bread flour is always better if your goal is a “fluffier” bread.

If you make a bread dough with all-purpose flour, the gluten network won't be as strong because of the lower protein content; this means the dough won't be able to stretch as much to accommodate those bubbles, resulting in smaller bubbles and bread with a tighter crumb.

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

If you add too much honey, it can change the hydration of your sourdough bread. Honey is higher in fructose than sugar making it much sweeter. For this reason, when substituting, you'll need to reduce the amount of sugar you use to three quarters (¾) or even half (½) of the amount of honey used.

What kind of honey is best for baking bread? ›

Amber honey is little darker, with more caramel notes, which makes it perfect for bread; I use it in my Parker house rolls." "For personal use, I'm such a fan of honeycomb. It's almost unbelievable to me that bees can produce such an incredible treat!

Cooking honey at 40 degree Celsius or more can cause negative chemical change that makes it taste bitter. Cooking destroys the potent health benefits of honey.

Too much baking soda will result in a soapy taste with a coarse, open crumb.

Baking soda changes the texture of baked goods by causing a batter or dough to spread, while baking powder produces light, fluffy texture. Some recipes may call for baking soda or baking powder on their own, while others may require both ingredients to create the ideal balance for great texture.

Good rule of thumb: I usually use around 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per 1 cup of flour in a recipe. Baking soda CAN leaven a baked good when exposed to heat. However, unless it is neutralized with an acid, your finished baked good will likely have a metallic aftertaste—like I mention above.

When baking with beer, amber and brown ales behave just as nicely as porters and stouts. Their low bitterness and nutty flavor with hints of caramel work well with cookies, pies, and sweet sauces.

Most are fair game for beer batter (Pilsner Urquell, Stella Artois, Modelo, and Firestone Pivo Pils are particularly nice), with the exception of Bohemian pilsner, which comes with a heavy dose of spices that can change the overall flavor of your dish. In a beer batter, pilsner is one of the more low-key options.

The beers that are highest in brewer's yeast are porters, stouts, and IPAs. Beers that are high in alcohol or that have a hazy appearance also tend to use more yeast than other types of beer.

One of the best methods to making quick bread is with beer. When you add beer to your bread mix, the beer's yeast content reacts with the baking powder and starches in the flour, causing the dough to rise and start to leaven.