Here’s the recipe for the beer bread pictured in the previous post; this is a super easy, quick-to-put-together quick bread. I love how it only takes one bowl and a few ingredients that you probably have in your pantry. After a bake in the oven, you have yourself a crusty, savory and moist bread that you could dunk in a bowl of hot soup or eaten at breakfast with your choice of spread (maybe a sundried-tomato,fig, and caper balsamic jam, perhaps?).

As with most of my baked goods, I opted to use white whole wheat flour. Since this is a quick, not yeasted, bread, I substituted half the portion of white whole wheat with whole wheat pastry flour to avoid a heavy texture. This worked out quite well; the bread was hearty, but not gummy or dense. As for the taste, the whole wheat added a welcome nutty flavor that complimented the yeasty aroma of the beer. As for the beer that I used, I just used a can of Kirin Ichiban, as that was what I had on hand.

Enjoy!

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson: always keep backups of EVERYTHING. I am so guilty of just being lazy and putting off this simple act of backing up data, thinking “Oh, I’ll just do it tomorrow . . . or next week . . . or later . . .” But you say this every week and when you really do need your backups, it’s too late.

Anyway, I know better now. In a way it was a blessing in disguise; it gave me a chance to breathe new life into the blog. I completely reworked the design of the blog and thought about how to better organize its contents. Hopefully you find the new changes welcome too. I hope to post not only more recipes but restaurant reviews and more thoughts on food in general. Because if you know me, I think about food. A LOT.

Ok! Off my soapbox and back to the food. I’ve always been intrigued with cooking with wine, and when I came across this recipe at Lisa’s Kitchen, I knew I had to try it. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my biscotti to be earth-shatteringly crispy and crunchy . . . not so much a fan of the tender version (wouldn’t it just be a gussied-up long, skinny version of a cookie?) I prefer bake my biscotti in my convection oven, making sure all traces of moisture have been zapped away . . . but if you’re in the tender-biscotti camp, by all means, bake them to your desired preference.

These biscotti were delicious, full of umami with a hint of sweetness in the end. Not only that, they’re super easy to make and vegan as well. By the way, this is a recipe that I had written before my site was hacked; it was a bit difficult to remember the exact measurements for the ingredients listed; for those who do give it a try, leave a comment and let me know how your results turn out.

I also made a lime-cilantro-roasted peanut version, substituting beer for the wine, roasted peanuts for the caraway seeds, and throwing in a bunch of lime zest and home-dried cilantro. It smelled delicious while it was baking but the end result lacked the zesty punch I was going for. I’ll have to work on this one a bit more, so I’m not going to put up the recipe yet.