"Three" Ingredient Recipes Part II--I Heart Chowhound

For someone as obsessed with food as I am, Chowhound is a wonderful resource. I've asked several questions on the board, and 98 percent of the time, I've gotten an answer. Then there are the times I find a fabulous idea for a simple recipe. Like the "3 ingredient" beer recipe that someone put up just yesterday. I haven't had a whole lot of time to bake, with choir and finals and everything else going on, but here was a perfect way to get rid of my Guinness beer that I've had in my fridge for 8+ months. Plus, this bread required no kneading to boot. Thus, while eating dinner, I baked this bread. I tweaked it a little by adding rosemary and grated gruyere cheese, and using half whole wheat flour. I just pulled it out of the oven 10 minutes ago and had it with the wonderfully yummy pumpkin seed butter that Patita gave me. YUM.

Someone on the board called it 3-2-1 bread:
3 cups self-rising flour
2 TBSP sugar
1 12 oz. bottle of beer

If you use regular flour, you add 3 tsp of baking powder and 1.5 tsp NaCl to help it rise.
You bake in a 375 degree oven for 1 hour.

Be forewarned-- it does have that distinct beer taste, but the rosemary, cheese and the sugar abated it a bit or complemented it nicely. It goes splendidly well with this pumpkin seed butter, though, and would make a grand side to a hearty soup.

It was my first try, so I need to do some tweaks (the crust came out too dry/hard, for example), before I can bring it to a party and wow people with it, but 3-ingredient recipes--even if the "three" is really a "five"--are a godsend around this time of year.

It frees up time for me to blog and extol the virtues of such recipes, for example. :)