Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Newcastle rolls

Beer is liquid bread. It's made from grain, yeast, water, sound familiar? So we should be able to make bread with beer! Let's do it!


Standard blah blah setup for double batch of bread loaves. 6 1/2 cups bread flour, 2 tsp yeast, 2 tsp salt, blah blah we've done this to death. Normally would use about 3 cups of water give or take. I use one cup to bloom the yeast on this, and the other 2 cups is going to be Newcastle Brown Ale, one of my favorite beers! Anyway, pour the yeast into the well of flour and salt, let sponge, then add (lukewarm) beer:


Oh no, party foul! Nobody spills beer in my h- well, okay maybe this once!

Mix it up, keeping it as wet as you can and still keep it together. It was tough for me and I had to flour my work surface for once, but I got it to behave for the most part. Knead for ten, cover and rest for 90 minutes, punch, and then cut into eight roughly-equal balls of dough. Pinch the key to seal them, arrange them on a pan so that they're easily resting against each other, and let proof for 45 minutes. From there, rub some flour on the top, slit with a knife, and let them bake in an oven at 425 for 25 minutes, misting like an obsessed person.


Cool em on a wire rack, and put the next batch in. Makes for eight big (as in huge) rolls.


Here's where the insanely moist dough pays off. Short bake time + steam makes the crumb as moist as you can get without still having dough. Give it a whiff, and it smells of wonderful brown ale!

Now stay tuned next week and we'll take this bread and turn it into beer, hahaha I'm just playin'.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I had a nice witty comment written up, but it didn't let me post it, so you're stuck with this one... It probably wasn't that witty come to think of it. But anyways, you're my hero for the day, way to use beer as an ingredient. 1 out of 40 isn't bad, It's just not great.

Chuck said...

This one will adopt well to carnivorous habits too, so try it out, and you can pile on a lot of roast beef if that's your world vision. I'm going to probably serve it with eggplant or some portabella mushrooms or both.

deedles said...

MMM..good! I made a terrific sandwich with these! But why were you UP posting at 3 am!!!???