Guinness Bread with Molasses

I found this on Simply Recipes and of course had to try it! If you look through this blog you'll find another beer bread recipe. I'd link it but I don't feel like searching for it myself. It was a super simple recipe much like this one that you can use any sort of beer, but when I saw this one I was like yup the hubby will love this one. I'm not too fond of Guinness myself so I'm not sure how well I'm going to like it but we shall see! I'm on a bit of baking rampage today. This bread, some chocolate chip cookies (recipe to come), and then the other beer bread so I can use up this bag of flour I bought (if I don't it will be awhile again before I even remember I have it, so no use it letting it go to waste! I'll just make everyone around me fat!)

Here is the recipe for the Guinness Bread with Molasses (pictures to come. As you can imagine my kitchen is a disaster!)

Do not use stale beer for this recipe, you want the carbonation.

Ingredients
3 cups self-rising flour*
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup molasses
A pinch of salt (roughly 1/8 teaspoon)
12 ounces of Guinness beer
Butter for greasing the pan and painting the top, about 3 tablespoons

* If you don't have self-rising flour, you can substitute using a ratio of 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, plus 1/8 teaspoon of salt, for every cup of self-rising flour. Have made both ways though and got better results from the self-rising flour.

Method
1 Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan well with butter.

2 Pour the flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl and whisk to combine.

3 Slowly pour the Guinness into the flour mixture. (The “pub cans” are larger than 12 ounces, but they have better carbonation, so I pour most of it out and leave a swig to drink. This has never failed me, but if you are a stickler, use a 12-ounce bottle of Guinness instead.) Start stirring the beer into the dry ingredients, and when you are about halfway done, add the molasses. Mix well, just to combine. Don’t work the heck out of the batter – because that’s what it’ll look like – but you don’t want lumps, either.

4 Pour into the loaf pan to no more than 2/3 full. Pop into the oven immediately and bake for 50 minutes. Since ovens can vary, check the bread after 40 minutes and see if a toothpick inserted into the deepest part of the loaf comes out clean. If it does, you’re done.

5 Let the loaf cool a bit, maybe 5 minutes, and then turn it out onto a rack. Paint it with lots of soft butter, which will melt as you go.