Rascals Recipes: Stout Brown Bread

 

We’re all gone mad with the baking anyway, right? Uncle Alo is coming.

This is a healthy and tasty brown bread made with The Breakfast of Champions 6.1% oatmeal and coffee stout.

Here’s what you’ll need:

 

First up, mix up all the dry ingredients – by hand, be grand – in a bowl. No, wait, first up is crack open a can of The Breakfast of Champions and pour yourself a glass. Then mix all the dry ingredients.

 

 

Next job is to mix the wet ingredients together, in a bowl or Pyrex jug, whatever suits. Treacle is a bit of an old school ingredient. I had to travel back to the 1960s to find a tin. Well, not quite. Much to my surprise, my local Super Valu had it. You should probably wear a hazmat suit when handling treacle. Seriously, it is one messy ingredient if not handled properly.

 

 

You could use soft dark brown sugar instead, but treacle really brings a unique consistency, colour and flavour to the bread. Mix up all the wet ingredients, including the treacle, then add to your bowl of dry ingredients and fire up the mixer. (Don’t worry if the treacle doesn’t mix entirely with the eggs, buttermilk and stout; so long as it it’s in there in some fashion.)

 

 

Give it all a good mix, not for too long though. Really just a few minutes will do. You’ll know when all the ingredients are clearly and visibly blended well together. Next job is simply dunk it all into your baking tray. Pro tip: get yourself a few of those baking tray liner things, rather than having to take a scissors to some baking paper and be fluting around with all that.

 

 

Looks grand, right? Whack on the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (centigrade? what’s the difference?) and bosh in your bread, as Jamie Oliver might annoyingly say. Have another can while you wait 50 minutes for it to bake. Here’s what it should look like when you take it out:

 

 

Pro tip: immediately take the bread out of the tin (with the paper or without, be grand) and place on a rack to cool. This will prevent any additional baking happening, because that could potentially happen in the hot tin. After it’s cooled, slice it up and serve with whatever the heck you like: soup, chowder, charcuterie, pastrami and cheese… enjoy!

 

 

Big thanks to Fiona Browne,  whose recipe I adapted for this. Good on ya Fiona!

 

 

To buy The Breakfast of Champions, visit our webshop here or find it in all good independent off-licences, including our own off-licence here at Rascals HQ! Open Wed – Sun from 4pm.

For every webshop order during the month of February, we’ll donate €1 to NCBI Ireland. You can read more about the initiative here. 

Looking for your favourite beers nearby? You’ll find a comprehensive list of Rascals stockists here.