Beer Bread! (No rise no knead) River cottage

This is technically the first bread I've ever made by myself. When I saw it on River Cottage's : Three Go Mad Christmas, I thought it was time to get trying or else I'll never get to make a baguette in the special thingy Sellan gave me. I did go out and buy a loaf pan from Ross though. I found the text version of the recipe "here".

Ingredients

• 350g white self raising flour, plus extra to dust
• 150g wholemeal self-raising flour
• 2tsp salt
• 1tbsp caster sugar
• 2 handfuls raisins and/or sultanas
• 1 handful walnuts, roughly chopped
• 500ml beer or lager
• butter to grease

I decided to go only white self-rising flour because that's what I had. I also didn't want to add any nuts or fruits this time because I just wanted to know what the bread taste like.

For beer I chose leinenkugel's orange shandy:

 it has a wheaty flavor with orange scent, I was hoping for more of a Panache taste when I bought it but it's nice here.

Preheat an oven to 180C (350 degF)

Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt and sugar. Stir in the raisins/sultanas and the walnuts until well combined. Open the beer and pour into the bowl, mixing as you pour until all the beer has mixed into the flour.

Grease the sides and base of a 2lb (900g) loaf tin. Dust in flour and shake out any excess.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin (the batter will be alarmingly loose, this is correct!) and transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for 1 and a half hours or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Once cooked remove from the tin and transfer to a wire rack for cooling. This can be eaten warm or cold and will last a couple of days in a sealed container. Ideal to eat with cheese.

 

my second batch was not quite as wet (I don't have a liquid measure at Thomas's so I'm kind of guesstimating haha)

ooooh I wonder if it would have been bigger if I made a larger batch?

still pretty

and tada the crumb!

I accidentally made  batch 1 a bit salty because I thought the tsp was a tbs. Batch 2 is halved and we'll see what happens!