Monday, January 28, 2013

Chicago Breweries: Beer Bread Project 2013

We posted a couple of weeks ago about a special new project at Rosie Discovers.  This year we're touring breweries in the Chicago area.  Why are we touring them you ask?  Well over the holidays we got this great idea to make bread with craft beers.

Had I ever made beer bread before?  Well, no but I have a basic understanding of how to make a great loaf of bread.  With this knowledge, I've been experimenting and working the kinks out of my yeasted beer bread recipes.  My hope for each bread recipe is to bring out the flavors in the beer.  To make each loaf special.  I'll be sharing these recipes with you along the way, so make sure you come back to check them out.

Here are photos of a few of my practice loaves.  The first is a Spaten Doppelbock, which is a dark German beer.  This bread wasn't too bad, but not quite right.  The dopplebock was still sour despite the sugar I added.

The second was a Sam Adam's Coastal and the only quick bread I made.  I don't know if the Sam Adam's is just an icky beer, but my loaf turned out like a flour tasting hockey puck.  Definite yuck.  I used a King Arthur Flour recipe and it just wasn't good.

The last is a Summit Saga IPA.  This made a pretty good bread with a citrus taste to it.  It wasn't a particularly strong beer, so it tasted more like a bakery sandwich bread.

The first brewery we're featuring is Church Street Brewing Co. in Itasca, IL.  Let me tell you, they were incredibly kind and patient with us.  They walked us through pretty much the entire brewing process.  It's a bit more involved than you might think.  :)  We're going to have 4 (that's right FOUR) different breads made with their beers and spent grain.

Make sure to follow along as we hope to get to work with most of the breweries in the Chicago area.  Also feel free to leave the name of your favorite brewery in the comments below to make sure that we contact them.

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