snadblog

A friend of mine used to sell Tastefully Simple products as a side job. The stuff is geared towards fast and easy cooking, and most items only require that you add one or two ingredients. The results are usually very tasty and easy to make. Last year I tried their Bountiful Beer Bread mix and was awestruck by the results. The bread itself was quite tasty, but what blew me away was how it was prepared. You dump the dry mix in a bowl, add a bottle off beer, stir it, plop it into a loaf pan, and bake it. That’s it! No other ingredients required, and you have a loaf of actual fresh-baked bread in under an hour. I bought another box of the mix and stuck in my pantry, where it has sat forgotten for months.

Yesterday I was looking through an issue of Woman’s Day magazine and a recipe caught my eye. It was for 2-Ingredient No-Knead Beer Bread and I was intrigued. This recipe claimed that the only ingredients were self-rising flour and beer. That’s… it. Flour and beer. And you get bread out of it? No way! I looked more closely. It was self-rising flour, which can easily be duplicated by adding a little baking powder and salt to regular flour. And the beer would add the yeast, sugar, and moisture. It’s just crazy enough to work.

Then a little bell went off in my head as I remembered the Tastefully Simple bread that was so similar. I searched my pantry and found the box of TS bread mix and looked at the ingredient list:

1. Enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, enzymes, ascorbic acid, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid),
2. sugar
3. leavening (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodiumbicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate)
4. salt
5. dextrose

So that’s flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and more sugar. The only difference between this mix and the recipe I’d found was sugar. Actually, there’s another difference: the cost. Setting aside the cost of the beer, the WD recipe costs about a quarter. The TS mix costs $4.99 plus shipping plus tax. I don’t know whether to be horrified at the scam Tastefully Simple is pulling off or be in awe of the fact that they’re up-selling flour so well.

This morning I made a batch of bread using the WD recipe. It was fast, easy, and gave great results. It made a loaf of bread with a crunchy crust and a spongy, chewy, fluffy interior. Very yummy, especially when spread with some cream cheese. Dennis tasted it and was amazed at how much it tasted like beer. He even nodded eagerly when I mentioned I’d used Blue Moon beer and he said “I can totally taste it!”

The question is, how did it compare to the TS version? I admit that it’s been a while since I had the TS bread, but from what I recall, the two tasted quite similar. I think the WD recipe could use a little more salt and I might add some sugar, too, which I think would make the crust a little softer. I may even make a batch of each kind and compare them side by side to be sure.

Next time you want a snack and have a beer and some flour laying around, stir ‘em up and make you some bread. And next time you consider an order from Tastefully Simple, think twice.

Oh, one more thing… the TS mix claims that you can use any carbonated beverage to make the bread; it doesn’t have to be beer. I can’t help but assume the same would hold true for the WD recipe. A substitution like that would make this recipe suddenly suitable for kids. As easy as it is to prepare and as huge as the payoff is for such a short wait time, I’m sure any kid would love to make a whole loaf of bread all by herself! (I’ll have to try it out on my pretend kids…)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under All, Food, Time and Money Savers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.