what would beer do to

pizza crust? i saw a recipe that used beer to make cookies. the judges liked the flavor.Would it work and what would it do to the dough?

Beer would make it against the law for anyone under 21 to eat it. Since that accounts for 40% of pizza customers I would say that your sales would drop 40%.

Oh and the dough would taste yucky like watered down beer.

Been there … Done that…Doesn’t work and taste is YUCK…JMHO.

how were the cookies?

I’m not sure that’s true. The beer would bake out of it, just like a wine sauce loses the bulk of the alcohol as well.

As for the flavor, you’d have to use something different in flavor than a Budweiser or other basic domestic. You’d need something with a very bold flavor to make any real difference.

In addition, bottled beer has dead yeast whereas keg beer has live yeast.

Finally, to replace any real percentage of water with beer would be quite cost prohibitive.

My information from my beer brewing days is that most modern American beer is force carbonated. The beer is filtered through incredibly fine filters to remove any yeast carcasses because they autolyse and produce off flavors in the beer. Bottles and kegs both will be filtered to remove all but the tiniest amount of dead yeast. Some brands are bottle conditioned to get natural carbonation, or to give a cache of a layer of yeast goo at the bottom of the bottle. It was trendy in the late 80’s . . . and still is for some craft brews using natural conditioning.

Alcohol may a questionable issue, I think. At 5% alcohol by volume, and total liquids are like 1/3 the weight of the dough . . . you’re talking about something like 1.5% alcohol by weight before baking. This website quotes some USDA info about cooking off alcohol. http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/AlcoholCooking.htm
While they did not likely test baking bread, or pizzas, I cannot imagine more than 50% of the original alcohol is remaining, so take it to .75 percent or so. that’s assuming someone wants to spend that much money using beer for the entire liquid portion of the dough.

I have not found a law prohibiting anyone from eating a bread dough based on alcohol content, and definitely not a less than 1% alcohol by volume. If there is one you have in your state/municipality and handy, please do send the info so I can follow up in our state. I will be making some dishes that have a trace of alcohol and want to be sure there are no hidden laws documentable out there.

Darker, stronger flavored beers will probably tint and/or flavor the dough respectively. It will depend on how much you use as to the color/flavor change. Heck, if brown sugar or molasses can tint the dough, then so will an oatmeal stout.

Beer in dough is pretty good. But you have to use a good beer. Diana Coutu in Canada won a prize for hers and I tasted it at AIB. I was surprised she used Moosehead as it has always been a skunky beer here in Texas. But the beer she had was not skunky. I suspect it is because Moosehead is shipped in green bottles which lets light make it skunky by the time it gets to Texas.

Anyway, beer is great in dough. But if you use Bud or some other swill based on rice instead of malted barley, you are gonna get a nasty product.

I think it was a malt liquor.

PD

Beer is “malt liquor”. But if you are talking about the forties that drunks swill from paper bags, then that would probably be nasty.