Beer bread. what I did.
Finally found a Porter beer. I'm not a beer drinker. The last beer I bought was also to cook with. That was a good 15 years ago to make soup. Caramelized onions beer and cheese makes a great soup. So I took this Porter home and tried it. Picture this. You take beer outside. Clean your bar-b-q pit out with it. Use a bucked at the bottom to collect all the beer. Put it back in the bottle. Wallah Porter! Well at least this particular Porter beer. The good news I now know how to make this stuff. : )
For the bread. I poured a bottle into a heavy sauce pan. Reduced it on a slow simmer to 1 cup. This did two things for me. First I'm not sure how alcohol and yeast get along. I didn't want to introduce this into the dough. Wanted to rely on the yeast for fermentation. Secondly it condensed the already strong flavor of the Porter. Going down from 12 oz to 8 got rid of a lot of un necessary liquid.
Having made this same bread for weeks now. Starting it with a poolish aged at different times. Even once with a stiff biga. I know how this bread should taste. This bread was made dump and go. No starter. The only difference was using the reduced beer to replace one cup of water. It made a difference. This bread is uniquely different in flavor than any of the versions I've made before. And the flavor does hold up to food. Just like a well aged poolish.
I used a beer called 'Black Butte Porter'.
This opens a new world of flavor for me.