ABC - Cheese-stuffed Crusty Loaves

Happy April Fool's Day!! This month's ABC recipe is no joke: Cheese-stuff Crusty Loaves. As you might know, the ABC bakers are baking recipes from the King Arthur Flour website.

Two cheese-stuff crusty loaves

Although mine looked like beehives filled with liquid cheese (haha), they sure tasted ridiculously good. I filled my loaves with a mixture of Colby Jack and Mozzarella cheese, dried minced onion, garlic powder, dried basil, and some special green olives from Morocco marinated in a spicy Harissa sauce.

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

This recipe uses an overnight starter to enhance the dough's flavor. It's really minimal work.

After 15 hours, it looks like this. See all the bubbles?

The next day, I put the starter and the rest of the ingredients in my bread machine and ran the Dough cycle. After the initial rise, the dough is patted and stretched into a rectangle and then filled with cheese (and whatever else you like).

Filling: Moroccan green olives, Colby Jack, Mozzarella, basil, dried onion, garlic powder

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise until puffy. This took about 1 hour in my kitchen.

My tool of choice to cut neat slices, is dental floss. I cut the dough in half, making 2 large loaves (or beehives, haha).

They went into a 425F oven right away, for about 35 minutes.

Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• My husband loved this bread. He ate it slightly warm and didn't mind a second slice. When asked for his rating, he gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Score!!
• I thought the bread had great flavor, without an overly yeasty odor which I attribute to the overnight starter. The texture of the bread was both soft and chewy. The salty and spicy filling complemented the bread really nicely.
• My BFF and her daughter also tasted this bread and loved it, even at room temperature.
• I took one loaf to work (which is the day after I baked this), and everyone loved it. They didn't even bother toasting it which I had recommended :o)
• Changes: reduced the amount of salt by 1/2 tsp because of the cheese and olives, added 1/3 cup (23 gr) dried milk powder to the dough, substituted 5 oz of the white flour with KAF White Whole Wheat flour. Reduced the amount of cheese by 2 oz: used 4 oz of Colby Jack cheese and 4 oz of Mozzarella cheese.
• I don't have KAF all-purpose flour which is high in protein, so I used bread flour instead.
• Next time, I would divide the dough in half to make two rectangles. I'd create 4 smaller loaves. I could have cut my loaf into 4 pieces but then I'd end up with 2 middle pieces with an open bottom, and cheese oozing out.
• If you'd like to try out this recipe for yourself, you can find the recipe HERE.
• Check out what the other ABC bakers thought of this recipe.

This post is submitted to:

• Yeastspotting
• BYOB (Bake Your Own Bread) @ Roxana's Home Baking (#BakeYourOwnBread)