Beer Bread Grilled Cheese

Colin and I often dream of opening our very own grilled cheese and craft beer restaurant, so it was only a matter of time before we started trying to figure out a way to merge these two items into one tasty treat.  Upon finding a recipe for a beer bread grilled cheese, I knew we were in business!  The recipe looked a little tricky given that I've never made bread before, but in reality it was pretty simple (and afforded me the opportunity to further diminish our 6 month old Miller Lite stash)! 

First up was making the bread itself.  Ingredients were pretty straightforward:

* 3 cups flour
* 1 can beer
* 4.5 Tbsp baking powder
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1.5 tsp salt

I was surprised by how easy this was-- mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and gradually add the beer until you've got dough, then shape that dough into a greased loaf pan. 

I realized all too late that I don't actually have a loaf pan, so I improvised using my square pan in my 9 x 13 pan to make a more loaf sized nook.  Surprisingly this actually worked! 

I popped the bread in a 350 degree oven and, after 45 minutes, was pleased to find a real live loaf of bread!  I think you can actually cook the bread anywhere from 35-45 minutes, but I wanted to err on the side of more well done.

I let the bread cool for a bit while I went to work on the rest of the sandwich.  Ingredients as follows:

* White onion
* Olive oil
* Cheddar
* Havarti
* Dijon Mustard
* Oregano

First up I prepped the onions.  I thinly sliced my onion half (although in retrospect a whole onion would have been better) and put them in a pan along with some olive oil and let them cook until they were starting to wilt. 

At that point I sprinkled in some oregano and turned the heat down to medium low/low and allowed the onions to cook (covered) for 10 more minutes.  Voila!  Caramelized onions! (Oopse, forgot to get a photo of this)

The only real remaining bit of prep work was grating up the cheese.  We chose Havarti and cheddar because we like those cheeses, but I'm sure any cheese of your choosing would be tasty as well!

Next came what proved to be the hardest part-- slicing the beer bread.  The bread was so chunky that it was hard to slice it thinly without chunks falling off, so I ended up with some pretty thick slices.  Oh well, having tasted the bread I could vouch for its quality so wasn't concerned at the prospect of having to eat more.

Once I managed to get 8 thick-ish slices laid out I added the caramelized onions, followed by the Havarti and cheddar (I did cheddar on one slice and then Havarti on top of the onions). 

No specific quantities here-- maybe like 3 ounces of Havarti and 2 ounces of cheddar spread per 2 sandwiches?  Not being a huge fan of Dijon mustard, I left it to Colin to add some to his sandwich, whereas mine were complete with just the cheese and onions.  Because the bread was so thick it was certainly a challenge to flip the sandwiches (the two spatula attack was a must).  For one of my sandwiches the bread started to crumble partway through the cooking process, so I had to remove it from the pan before I felt it was time.  Oh well.  Eventually they were all ready to roll!

Taste Review:

We didn't really get a strong aroma from the sandwich, which is strange given that the bread was freshly baked.  The sandwich lived up to its appearance where density was concerned!  The bread combined with a solid bit of cheese meant that the sandwich was super dense-- there was absolutely no filler.  The bread is savory at first, but actually has a sweet flavor to it and reminded us of a biscuit. 

The onions were nice and sweet in a way that enhanced the sweetness of the bread, but didn't make it too sweet.  We actually concluded that a sandwich overflowing with onions would be even better-- their sweetness plus sharp cheese plus dense bread would be a recipe for success.  Colin says that the Dijon adds just the right amount of spice, but that he wouldn't add any more.

The more we ate the more we realized that the bread really is a force to be reckoned with here.  You need a lot of cheese and onions to balance out the heartiness of the bread and I even wondered if this would be better as an open faced sandwich, so you could lessen the bread while upping the filling.  I found that by the end I was pulling chunks of bread off to try to get a better bread to cheese ratio.  Another way to solve this problem would be to slice the bread more thinly, but I'm not sure I could do that (not to say there aren't expert bread slicers out there who could).  So in general the sandwich has a lot of potential, but it wasn't quite the right balance of ingredients yet.  But as it stands now, this was definitely the most unique sandwich we've tried in recent memory.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Beer Bread Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	3
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Looks very chunky and unique.
Taste:	B

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!