Whole Wheat Beer Bread

I had a craving for bread today while I was cleaning the kitchen, and since that happened around 2PM, I didn't really have the time or energy to make a yeast bread from scratch. Instead, I planned to use some of the lovely Canadian cream ale I picked up on my trip north with a bit of maple syrup instead of sugar to craft a beer bread. Mmm...Canadian beer bread. This recipe calls for pouring butter over the batter before you bake it, which gives the crust a delicious buttery flavor as it cooks.

What follows is my experiment with said bread:



Ingredients

• 2 cups white whole wheat flour plus 1 cup organic unbleached all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  
• 1 1/4 cup beer
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup (1 stick) butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Sift together dry ingredients, set aside
3. Lightly grease and flour loaf pans (I used two 5x3 bread loaf pans)
4. Combine dry ingredients with beer and maple syrup, mix thoroughly
   
5. Pour batter into pans, pour melted butter over mixture
6. Bake for 1 hour
   
7. Remove from pan and let cool on wire rack for at least 15 minutes
   

Notes
Instead of using sugar (which the recipe originally called for) I used maple syrup. It turned out awesome!

Also, here's a picture of it sliced open, full of nummy goodness. Please pardon the flash on the camera, it was being cranky.