Garlic and Parmesan Beer Bread

After the day long baking session on Sunday I was a little bit tired by the time dinner time rolled around.  I already had the lasagna ready to bung in the oven but what to have with it?  Defo something that didn't require much effort from me!  Enter Jac from Tinned Tomatoes and her Beer Bread recipe.  I agree, on first sight you may not think making a loaf of bread is a low effort option but au contraire.  The beer in this recipe does all the hard yakka for you, no kneading or proving required.

Garlic and Parmesan Beer Bread
3 cups plain flour
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2 finely chopped garlic cloves
1 and ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan
300ml beer/lager (Hubby had a 330ml bottle of Peroni in the fridge so I stole used that)

Heat oven to 190C.

Sift the flour into a large bowl and then add the sugar, salt, baking powder and add the garlic and 1 cup of the Parmesan. Gradually pour in the beer and mix until just combined, do not over mix. The mixture will be quite thick and stretchy.

Jac says to 'pour' the mixture into a lined loaf tin but mine wasn't really in so much of  a pouring consistency but more of a dough like consistency.  This didn't seem to effect the final outcome though.  Sprinkle with the remainder of the Parmesan cheese.  Bake for 45 minutes until golden. The outside should be crispy and a skewer should come out clean.

Leave to cool in the pan for a few minutes before moving onto a wire rack.

Best served warm.

Makes 1 loaf
Adapted from Tinned Tomatoes

I'm not too sure what I expected from this little loaf.  I wanted something to complement the lasagna, something like a cheesy garlic bread but the garlic wasn't as predominant as I would have liked, I'll be upping the number of cloves next time.  Also, the flavour of the beer was really strong too.  I'm not such a huge fan of beer though so maybe my palette is a bit over sensitive to the flavour?  Hubby on the other hand thought it was just fine.  I think I might try some different kinds of beers in this, maybe even some cider (I like cider!) and see what that does to the flavour.  All up though very succesful for very little effort ;0)