One Hour No Knead Artisan Hefeweizen Bread Yeast bread is a lot like replacing a ceiling light. You have this mental block that screams at you, “you can’t do that, it’s not for you. That’s for other people who know things you don’t know.” Replacing light fixtures hardwired into the ceiling and baking bread are… Read More
If you close your eyes, and take a second, you can put the taste of sourdough bread side-by-side with a sour ale. The flavor is liquid sourdough, the notes are so similar, and there is a good reason for that: it’s the same process. Sourdough bakers and sour ale makers are cultivating the same thing: a… Read More
Blueberry Muffin Beer Loaf Cake I’ve always been curious. Probably a bit too curious for my own good, but I’ll take it over safe, and timid. Lately, It’s been gluten-free beer that’s had me wondering (wait, don’t go! Let’s talk about gluten-free beer just for a second!). It’s not so much the “gluten” part that… Read More
Grilled Garlic Beer Flatbread It’s stopped raining for two days. So, obviously, the grill needs to come to life. There is something beautifully primal about cooking over open flames, even if those open flames are produced by propane our ancestors didn’t have access to. The fire, smoke, heat much higher than your oven is able… Read More
Pale Ale Crumb Cake Walking in the bay doors, they all seem to look the same. There are always the mingling smells of hops, malt and fickle high-maintenance yeast hard at work. There’s a brewer in rubber boots nearby, working out a problem behind a furrowed brow. There is inevitably a tank being cleaned, water from a… Read More
One Bowl Cinnamon Sugar Beer Muffins There is a feeling in the depths of winter that the quiet will swallow you whole if you don’t keep moving. As if you’d just be that misplaced bracelet that never gets found, disappearing behind furniture and then just ceasing to exist. I’m not used to this. Born and… Read More
Bacon Beer Cheese Stromboli, just 30 minutes to make the best football food ever. I’m sitting in my kitchen on a phone interview with a reporter from Bloomberg answering questions about the buyouts. You know the ones, the ABI, Miller-Coors, Constellation, Big Bad Macro Beer comin’ in and buying up OUR beer. The ones that… Read More
No Yeast Vanilla Brown Sugar Beer Cinnamon Rolls Every Christmas I make cinnamon rolls. Yeasty, gorgeous, giant rolls with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting. A recipe that took years to prefect into the soft, tender, sweet and cinnamony treat with the thick ribbon of sugary butter center and tangy frosting. I make it… Read More
20-Minute Garlic Cheddar Beer Biscuit Rolls This is an early warning sign. Some people have a nicotine itch when the stress starts to climb up their insides, some people get aggressive and angry, but I make bread. It’s a strange feeling, “I just want to make some bread,” being my pressure release valve. Biscuits are… Read More
Hefeweizen Mozzarella Bombs You should do an experiment. Before you become so dismissive of the impact of beer in baking (or, as a marinade for chicken), do a side by side. Sometime we beer-cook because of the flavor, but not always. Do you taste the baking soda in your cake? Of course not. But if… Read More
I made you something. It took me a year. Right after I made the big move from Los Angeles to Seattle, I spent the better part of last year holed up in my tiny wooden house writing my second cookbook,The Craft Beer Bites Cookbook. It’s the follow-up to my first book, The Craft Beer… Read More
No Yeast 20-minute Beer Flatbread I was trapped in the back of a rug factory in Morocco when I realized how relative things are. I was sitting on a stool made out of a block of wood, walls made of thick adobe all around me, the large wooden door had been slammed shut and locked… Read More
Think for a second about how long we’ve been doing this. How long people have stood in kitchens, mixed yeast with flour, warm liquid, sugar, salt. Watched it rise, smelled it as it baked. Even before anyone knew what yeast was, bakers had figured out how to use it. Centuries of bread baking and little… Read More
Grilled Cheese & Gratitude I was standing in the kitchen of a group home, talking to a 15-year-old foster kid when I learned what gratitude really was. (Before I became a full-time food and beer writer, I worked with foster and probation kids in South Central LA, you can read more about that here and… Read More
Homemade Beer Hot Dog Buns Somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth IPA I sampled this weekend, I realized something. Trying my best to taste the beer I was in charge of judging through a hop wrecked palate I realized that I love citrus. I love the bright, fresh flavors of citra hops, grapefruit peels, orange… Read More
Awesome Vegan Whole Wheat Stout Loaf This started three years ago as a personal challenge. I’d been looking up a recipe for 100% whole wheat bread and was told that it was really difficult to make really great tasting bread without at least some white flour, or copious amounts of butter. Challenge excepted. It… Read More
Garlic Parmesan Hefeweizen Pull Apart Bread I worked for a money laundered in college. I was a waitress at a small cafe right on the Rose Parade route through Pasadena. It wasn’t until later that I was able to dissect how complicit I was in his illegal dealings. He’d call me once a day and… Read More
Honey Hefeweizen Boule Loaf. Simple, easy and delicious. Perfect recipe for first time bakers! Last year, with a camera crew in my face, I interviewed the head brewer at my favorite Los Angeles brewery. “All I am is a yeast wrangler. I don’t work for the brewery, I work for the yeast.” He laughed until… Read More