Easy One Bowl, No Yeast Beer Bread
This beer bread is super easy to make in one bowl and only needs 6 ingredients – no yeast, no kneading, and no proofing required! Try my banana bread for another no yeast recipe – or if you want to try a bread with yeast next, try my homemade white bread next.
If you're reading this during the spring of 2020, you may be struggling to find yeast in grocery stores. Thankfully, you can still make delicious bread without yeast in different forms:
And now you can add Beer Bread to that list! The yeast found in the beer steps in to fill the void, and only needs 5 other ingredients and an hour of time to make a hearty, flavorful loaf with a crunchy crust and soft center.
I'd say it's easy enough to let your kids make it, but… that's probably a terrible idea since we're talking about a bread made with alcohol, right? Right, right. I knew that.
Tips for making beer bread
Choose a beer whose flavor you enjoy! The type of beer you use will produce a different flavor in the bread, but in my opinion almost anything will work.
I've used everything from a lager, to an IPA, to a Berliner Weisse. If you're into this sort of thing, try a pumpkin ale for a subtle pumpkin flavor!
My only exceptions would be any kind of fruit sours (can you imagine using a blackberry sour and ending up with a weirdly purple loaf? yikes) or non-alcoholic beers. Remember – you need the yeast for this to work.
Whisk the dry ingredients together, then switch to a wooden spoon for the rest. The dough gets sticky and thick, so you want a sturdy spoon to mix everything together once you add the beer to the dough.
Add half the melted butter to the loaf pan before adding the dough. This will act as your non-stick spray. Pour the rest on top of the dough – it lends itself to a deliciously buttery crust!
Don't stress about the texture of the dough before baking. It's going to be crackly and bumpy and it might be my favorite part about it. Just get the dough in a generally even layer and pop it in the oven.
Let it cool before slicing because it will be more crumbly than something like a piece of white bread, and a bit more “fragile” when it's just out of the oven.
So let it hang out a bit, then slice it and pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds before slathering it with some butter.
Theeeeeere it is.
I highly recommend using a honey butter if you have it – the bread is a perfect combination of sweet and savory, and the honey butter complements it really well.
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Easy Beer Bread
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ cup granulated sugar or honey
- 12 ounces beer
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted and divided
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- In a large bowl, whisk to combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add beer and use a wooden spoon to combine.3 cups (375 g) all purpose flour1 Tablespoon baking powder1 teaspoon kosher salt1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar or honey12 ounces (340 ⅕ g) beer
- Coat the inside of a 9×5″ loaf pan with half the melted butter (2 Tablespoons). Add batter to pan, then pour over the remaining melted butter.1/4 cup (56 ¾ g) unsalted butter
- Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is set and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then carefully remove from pan and transfer to wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Choose a beer whose flavor you enjoy! Just avoid non-alcoholic beers, as you need yeast in the beer for the recipe to work.
- Let it cool completely before you slice so it doesn't fall apart.
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition Disclaimer
The provided nutrition information is generated by an automatic API and does not take variations across specific brands into account. This information is provided as a general guideline and should not be treated as official calculations. Learn more here.