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Blue Moon Beer Bread: A year at home

March 12, 2017 Brett

The last time that I drank beer regularly was for a quarter a cup in frat basements. Cold, damp and often leaving the white laces of my shoes tea-stained in spilled Natty Light. I drank from a red plastic cup that my boyfriend had been ashing his Pall Mall in; I didn't drink beer for three years after that. 

Somewhere down the line of being back in Pennsylvania, I began to drink a beer with my father. Once by the pool deck on the Fourth of July, then weekly at a local restaurant. For years, we didn't talk much; we racked it up to not a lot in common. But slowly I opened up to him and slowly he listened more than I thought he would. He likes Coors Light. I buy him two and I stuck with Blue Moon, which runs about $2 during Happy Hour in my hometown.

My mother started coming out with us. She always had a story to tell about a relative I thought had died a long time ago. If you stop talking about people in my family, it's because they either wronged you in some arbitrary way or they died a few years ago, going unnoticed by my adolescent caprice. We liked to order spaghetti with extra garlic. I always bought the drinks. She had what I was having and one summer my father had to drive us home, we were both so drunk from Happy Hour and hearing the news of my brother's wife's pregnancy.

I moved back out of my parents' place after a year there and I miss those weekly traditions. They had to cancel their trip out next Tuesday, afraid of a snowstorm and my dad can't see very well at night. I planned on making this bread for them, but I'll hold off a week until I know they're coming, to surprise them and let them know that I wasn't unhappy the year I spent with them, I just readjusted myself a little harder to the world I grew up in.

Blue Moon Beer Bread

Recipe adapted from here, though the ratios are similar to many others out there. I think this is possibly the easiest quick bread in the world. Make sure to try out other beers as well, but I would omit the orange, cinnamon, and use white instead of brown sugar. 

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups flour
  • 3 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • A pinch of cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
  • 1 bottle Blue Moon
  • 8 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
  • Orange or clementine, sliced for garnish

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375*F and prepare a loaf pan with butter and parchment
  2. Sift together flour, soda, cornstarch, cinnamon, and sugar
  3. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon
  4. Pour your beer into the center of the well and stir
  5. Add butter
  6. Mix well and pour into your loaf pan
  7. Top with slices of orange and bake for 1 hour
  8. Remove and allow to cool before eating (you don't have to eat the oranges--they're just garnish!)
Tags beer, bread, beer bread, savory
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