Lil’ Man and I love to cook together.  Recently I was fortunate enough to receive a Danish Dough Hook from the nice folks over at Kitchen Simple and Tomoson. Since it’s been pretty warm recently, we decided to skip making a complicated recipe that would have us in the kitchen for a long time. We opted to make beer bread!

Beer bread is an amazing, easy to make, versatile food. It can be made to go with any meal, or it can be a meal itself! For this batch, we used Butterscotch Beer (it’s actually soda), butterscotch chips, and semi-sweet chocolate chips,  in addition to the basic ingredients below.

It was a very sweet, light dessert bread. Lil’ Man ate 3 pieces before the bread cooled!

If you’ve never used a dough hook before, it’s a kitchen tool that’s great for mixing up bread, cookies, even batters! It has a long, sturdy handle, and a wire loop that helps incorporate the ingredients. It’s a great addition to any kitchen, whether you are an every day baker, or only bake during the holidays. If you’ve got a cook in your family, they make a great gift too!

The basic recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

• 3 cups self rising flour (sifted) (Or if you don’t have self rising flour, mix together: 3 cups flour (sifted), 3 teaspoons baking powder,1 teaspoon salt)
• 1/4 cup white or brown sugar
• 1 (12 ounce) can beer or other carbonated beverage- See below*
• ½ stick melted butter

Directions

1. Sift the flour and sugar together.
2. Slowly pour the liquid over the dry mixture and mix until combined. We used the dough hook, but you can use a strong wooden spoon.
3. Pour dough into a greased Dutch oven or a greased bread pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes-1 hour or until when inserted, a knife comes out clean.

You can add any one of the following before your mix it together:

½ cup of the any of the following (feel free to mix and match).  If you want more “stuff” in your bread, feel free to add more than 1/2 cup:

• Dried fruits (make sure it’s bite sized!)
• nuts
• chocolate chips or any other kind of chips (white chocolate, cinnamon, butterscotch)
• shredded or cubed cheese
• chopped onions (raw or carmelized)
• shallots
• green onions
• chives
• To make it a main dish, pour 1/2 of the bread dough into the pan, pour in a layer of cooked meat (I like taco seasoned beef, or cut up/shredded cooked chicken breast cooked with ranch dressing powder or herbs), then top with the remaining bread dough. Bake as directed.

Any of the following spices are delicious (add to your taste):

Cinnamon, nutmeg, apple pie spice, Pumpkin pie spice, Italian seasoning, Mural of Flavor, garlic powder, onion powder. Add the herbs/spices into the flour before you add the liquids.

If you want to make a sweet dessert bread, make a crumble to top the bread with prior to baking:

• ½ C. flour
• ½ c. brown sugar
• ½ c. softenened butter
• Spices (I like Apple Pie or Pumpkin pie spice)

1. Combine all of the ingredients together.
2. Top the uncooked bread with this mixture.
3. Bake as directed as directed above.

*For a different texture, try different varieties of soda (fruit or cream sodas are great), soda water, light beer, Guinness or other dark beer. Match the type of beer with the other added items.  When using soda, add 2 teaspoons of yeast so you get the correct rise (beer contains yeast!).  Feel free to use whatever beer or soda you have in your house!  I don’t recommend using Root Beer- it makes the bread bitter.  Don’t use diet soda!  Baking with artificial sweeteners other than Splenda can make the bread bitter.

Yummy combos:

• Orange soda goes great with chocolate chips and orange zest.
• Light beer, sharp cheddar cheese, Mural of Flavor and caramelized onions are great together.
• Lighter beer (I like Stella Artois), Italian Seasoning, shredded mozzarella cheese or string cheese cut into cubes, and chopped dried tomatoes.
• Chocolate stout beer, dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries.
• Sam Adams Summer blend with apple or pumpkin pie spice, chopped dried apples, and dried cranberries.

I want to thank the great people over at Kitchen Simple and Tomoson for the chance to review this product. I was not financially compensated to review these products, however I received a Danish Dough Hook for free to facilitate my review. I only recommend products and services that I feel may be a good fit for my readers.