All the rich malty goodness of Irish Guinness in a quick bread with molasses!
BE PICTURED IN; CHARACTERIZED IN:
Please welcome Hank Shaw sharing his favorite Guinness bread recipe. ~ Elise
A few notes on making this beer bread: the Guinness needs to be cold, the self-raising flour needs to be relatively fresh (like men’s buoyancy decreases with age), and the loaf pan needs to be well greased. If your self-raising flour is more than 6 months old, add a tablespoon of baking powder.
Can you use other beers and sweeteners? Secure!
For a lighter beer bread, try Harp and Light Brown Sugar – it’ll still be Irish. I originally learned this recipe using Budweiser and white sugar, so your options are endless.
One caveat: don’t use hoppy beers like pale ale, as the bitterness will taste strange to you, unless you’re into serious bitterness, of course.
Guinness bread with molasses
This is fantastic eaten fresh and almost as good toasted the next day with a little more butter. Don’t use stale beer for this recipe, you want the fizz.
ingredients
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3 cups self-raising flour*
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1/2 cup white sugar
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1/3 cup unsulphured molasses
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A pinch of salt (about 1/8 teaspoon)
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12 ounces of Guinness Extra Stout
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Butter for greasing pan and for painting top, about 3 tablespoons
- *If you don’t have self-raising flour, you can substitute it with a ratio of 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder, plus 1/8 teaspoon salt for every cup self-raising flour. But I’ve done both ways and gotten better results with the self-rising flour.
method
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Preheat the oven and prepare the loaf tin:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan well with butter.
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Whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl:
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Slowly add Guinness to the flour, add molasses:
Slowly pour the Guinness into the flour mixture. (The “pub cans” are larger than 12 ounces, but they’re more carbonated, so I pour out most of it and have a sip. This has never let me down, but if you’re a stickler, use one 12-ounce bottle of Guinness instead.)
Begin stirring the beer into the dry ingredients and when about halfway through, add the molasses. Mix well just to combine.
Don’t work the dough to death—that’s what it looks like—but you don’t want any lumps either.
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Bake:
Pour into the loaf pan to no more than 2/3 full. Immediately place in the oven and bake at 350°F for 50 minutes. Since ovens can vary, check the bread after 40 minutes and see if a tester inserted into the deepest part of the loaf comes out clean. If yes, you are done.
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Cool and paint with butter:
Let the bread cool slightly, maybe 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Brush it with plenty of softened butter, which will melt as you do so.
