Garlic Cheese Beer Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What 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.

Think brisket, chicken, ribs, steaks, pork loin – all pair wonderfully with a slice of beer bread. When you're trying to keep it lighter, pair beer bread with your favorite salad. We highly recommend Caesar salad!

If you're new to baking with beer, porters and stouts are the best place to begin. Because they're brewed with dark roasted malt, they lend flavor notes of cocoa and coffee. Porters lean more toward chocolate and malted flavors with less bitterness.

Pro tip: As a good rule of thumb, keep in mind that whatever type of beer you use, the flavor will come through in your fresh-baked bread. Darker beer, like stouts and porters, will produce bread with more robust, pronounced flavors. Likewise, a blonde ale or pilsner will make a milder, lighter loaf.

In general, when making beer cheese, choose a brew with a light body and subtle flavor profile. Beers in the pilsner, blonde ale, and lager families would all be good options. For pilsners, stick to American styles as they are less hoppy, milder, and far less bitter than their European counterparts.

Milk powder.

Instant milk powder makes bread dough super soft and fluffy and also helps to give it a good rise. It also contributes to the dough staying nice and soft after baking for a little longer than a recipe that does not use milk powder.

Hefeweizen is a classic example of beer that is not especially high in alcohol, typically coming in between 4% and 6%, but it has perhaps the highest levels of yeast suspended in the beer. Hefes are known for their cloudy, hazy appearance and their nice thick head.

What is the best alcohol for baking? ›

For example, rum and bourbon give off nutty and vanilla tasting notes that work well with pie filling, cake mix and cookie dough (much like a vanilla extract). Red wine, port and brandy, on the other hand, add a sweetness that pairs nicely with glazes, chocolate cake and gingerbread.

Most of the alcohol cooks out of the bread but not a hundred percent.

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.

It's also the phrase you'll find gracing each box of Trader Joe's Beer Bread Mix. The flavor of the finished loaf really depends on what kind of beer you use: Go with a lager for a lighter profile, an IPA for a hearty, hoppy taste, or a stout for a rich result with a slightly darker finished product.

In the end, it comes down to whether you are searching for a beer with yeast still in the brew – in which case you should seek out wheat beers like Hefeweizen – or beers fermented with more yeast – in which case you should look for porters, stouts, and IPAs.

Beer: I typically use an IPA, but just about any kind of favorite beer will work in this recipe! Butter: Which we will use to grease the pan and brush on top of the bread to give it some extra-delicious buttery flavor.