This recipe is a delicious near crustless bread made in a pullman pan called Pain de Mie. “Pain” in French means “bread”, and “la mie” refers to the soft part of bread, called the crumb. The size is just larger than a slice of cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich. The bread was also excellent for French toast.
I love baking pans and the Pullman pan is my favourite. The Pullman pan was originally invented for baking bread in the pullman car of a train. The pan fits in a rack maximizing production for such a small oven. The slices are all uniform in size with virtually no crust and were sometimes called the “sandwich loaf” or “pan bread.” The challenge with this recipe is to use the right amount of dough, since the rise has to fit exactly. Too little and the top has a gap, too much and it squeezes out the ends. This recipe does not have a strong rise so it works well with a Pullman pan. When making it with a regular loaf pan use a smaller pan than you expect and do NOT score the dough. This dough has little oven spring.
Beer like bread share common ingredients: water, yeast and grain. This recipe is a lean bread with a pre-ferment of the yeast with some flour and water to give the yeast time to break down the flour. Most of the taste is derived though from the beer. The recipe is designed to use a standard 12 ounce bottle of beer. The beer should be room temperature to not slow down the yeast.