Cheese and Guinness Bread
Guinness Cheddar Bread; rich and tasty beer and cheese bread, made with everyone’s favorite Irish stout and some strong English cheddar, perfect for soups, lunch platters, or rustic sandwiches.
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Put your flours, salt, and yeast into alarge bowl. Try to keep the yeast and salt on separate sides of the bowl, as they can affect the riseof the bread otherwise.
  2. Add the brown sugar, rosemary, mustard, Guinness, and water. Stir everything together until you have a dough that isn’t too dry or too sticky.
  3. Using either a standing mixer or just using your hands, knead your dough for 10–12 minutes until it is smoother and more stretchy. (I tend to just roughly roll, punch, and knead it for 10 minutes, and that usually does the trick.) Once kneaded, place the dough back into the bowl, cover the bowl with some clingfilm, and leave it to sit for about 1 hour or until it has doubled in size. A warmer room can speed up the process.
  4. Once risen, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and use your fists to punch it out into a flat pancake. Sprinkle the grated cheese all over the dough.
  5. Roll up the dough and knead it again for about a minute, just to incorporate all the cheese throughout.
  6. To shape the dough for a loaf tin: Use your hands to pull two sides out and fold back into the center, then stretch out the other two sides, and fold these back into the center. Then simply roll the dough up into a log, and place it seam side-down into a greased loaf tin.
  7. To shape the dough into a ball: Use your hands to pull two sides out and fold back into the center, then stretch out the other two sides, and fold these back into the center. Flip the dough over and then simply turn the dough in a circle on the worktop using your hands, tucking the sides in and downward as you go, this should produce a nice cob-shaped loaf when baked.
  8. To rise in a loaf tin, simply leave the dough for a further hour or until nearly doubled in size again. To rise on a tray; simply place your ball of dough onto a greased tray and leave it for another hour to become nearly doubled in size again.
  9. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Once risen, score the bread any way you like with a sharp knife—this helps the bread rise evenly.
  10. Bake the bread in your preheated oven. To bake in a loaf tin, bake for 20 minutes, then carefully remove the loaf from the tin and bake for a further 20 minutes on a tray or until risen, golden, and hollow-sounding when tapped.
  11. To bake on a tray, Bake for 40 minutes or until risen, golden, and hollow-sounding when tapped. Once baked, allow the bread to cool completely on a wire rack.
Recipe Notes

Recipe reprinted with permission from Kelly Cletheroe, baker and food blogger at Maverick Baking. For more recipes by Kelly visit her blog at Maverickbaking.com