The second recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Cheddar Loaf (pages 280-284). This was an all-day project but almost all of it was various rising times (it’s winter here and I keep a cooler temperature kitchen, so very long rising times for me). The actual hands-on part was maybe a half hour spread out through the day.
Ingredients: flour, water, malt powder (or honey, sugar, or barley malt powder), yeast, dry milk, cheddar cheese, butter, Dijon mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.
The recipe is written nicely with easy to follow directions and tips to help along the way. There are a couple of places that I was happy to have some bread baking experience in the past, but nothing that would stymy a newbie. I am very happy with the way it all went and definitely very pleased with the taste of the bread. The inside is nice and airy and light and the outside crust is soft but crispy which doesn’t seem really possible, but there you have it. When I sliced the bread, I saw all the holes that you see in the photo and had a bit of a panic…are these supposed to be like this in there? Is it from where the cheese melted? Is it because I formed it wrong before putting it in the pan? Did it rise too much too fast in the oven? It’s a mystery, so if you know, please comment and help me figure it out, thanks in advance. (All that said, we didn’t mind the holes at all, they were just fine and the bread was light and airy, always a good thing.)
Despite the long rising times (again, this could very well be from my cooler temperature kitchen in winter) and the need to be present several times throughout the day to facilitate the process, this bread is worth all that and I will be making it again. Because the taste of the cheese is so prevalent in the final product, I would recommend buying a really good cheddar that is full of flavor, you will appreciate having done that when you taste that first bite. Our plans for using it, besides just eating it in hand, are grilled cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches, a take on bread pizza, and I’m sure we will come up with many more ideas as this is really really good.
If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment. You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish. I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We will choose two recipes for February, the first one will be Ginger Scones (pages 143-146). We’d love to have you join us.