Wonderful Beer-Cheese Bread

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   to accompany our supper of poulet a quarante gousses d'ail tonight, i am making some great beer/cheese bread. this recipe was shared by john rivera, and is one that he said was developed by his wife. it is top-notch wonderful-tasting stuff, and i highly recommend it. the cheese is awesome in this bread and combines perfectly with the beer.  

the more cheese the better, and the higher quality cheese (in terms of milkfat) the better, as well! the first time i made it, i used velveeta (about 50% more than the recipe calls for) and pabst blue ribbon beer - results were outstanding, and i couldn't wait to make it again. the second time, i used a microbrew from a montana brewry, and really enjoyed it.

 Beer-Cheese Bread

◦1 12-oz can or bottle of your favorite beer 
◦3 Tbsp. butter 
◦1/2 cup water 
◦2 pkgs yeast 
◦8 oz. American or Swiss cheese (use “deluxe” or full-milk cheese. If you use “partial-milk” cheese or Velveeta (a good substitute), be sure to increase cheese by 50% (12 oz). 
◦2 Tbsp. sugar or honey 
◦1 Tbsp. salt 
◦About 6 cups flour, give or take 

Melt butter in saucepan. Add beer and stir out all the foam. Add 1/2 cup water and heat on med-low till liquid steams. Meanwhile tear the cheese slices and toss them into the heating liquid, stirring constantly as they melt. Add them slowly, so that they have time to melt into the liquid completely. Stir in the sugar and salt. While it heats up, put 2 cups flour and 2 pkgs yeast in a bowl and mix well.

When cheese has melted and liquid is steaming, remove from heat and let cool to about 110 F. It is very important that the liquid not be too hot; otherwise it will kill the yeast! It will feel warm to the touch but not hot. Pour this mixture over the flour yeast pile.

With a spoon mix into a nice smooth batter. Add more flour, a cup at a time, until it makes a good bread dough. Knead it about 2 minutes and then put it to rise in an oiled bowl for about an hour or until double. 

Two options here:

a) Punch down and divide into 3 chunks. Each chunk gets divided into 3 parts to make braids, or since I can't braid, I form a loaf and place it in a well greased loaf pan. This makes 3 loaves. Put the pans into a place to rise again for about an hour or until doubled in size. 

b) This dough can also be made on a stone.  Just punch it down and form a nice single, round loaf (or two) after the first rising and place it on the stone and let this rise again for an hour or so. I put the stone in the cold oven and just leave the light on to provide warmth for the rising.

Once it's risen, leave stone or pans in the oven and heat the oven to 350 F. Bake until golden brown and looks right, about 40 minutes to an hour.

"Paint" top of bread with a stick of butter and sprinkle Kosher salt over it. You can enjoy this hot out of the oven, but it’s even better if you give it a half-hour or so to recover from the heat.

and here we are with a step-by-step of the process ~ here are the goods:

i elected to use a pound of velveeta for this bread; it worked well last time and the price was right! for beer, i wazs eager to try something from montana, and settled on salmon fly honey rye. not sure if it is a beer, and ale or whatever, but it looks and smells great, plus i figured the honey and rye would contribute to the final product.

and the bottle cap is pretty cool, too ~

after cutting up the velveeta into cubes:

i melted the butter in a pan and added the beer, stirring until it quit foaming:

added the water and then started adding cubes of cheese slowly, stirring constantly and adding them a few at a time in order to allow them to melt completely:

when the cheese was all melted in, i added the sugar and salt:

and then removed the pan from the heat and allowed the mixture to cool to a temperature of around 110 degrees, stirring now and then so that everything stayed mixed:

I then added the cheese mixture to two cups of flour:

and stirred it around to mix well. we kept adding flour, a cup at a time, and mixing it in until we had a total of about six-and-a-half cups and a good bread dough was formed:

then #1 son joe started kneading it and incorporating the last of the flour into the dough:

and we put the doughball into an oiled, covered bowl to rise:

after a little over an hour, the dough had risen to double in size. we pu nched it down and divided it into two balls for round loaves. they are currently rising and in my next post we'll finish this wonderful stuff ~ 