Cheesy Bread for Delicious Sandwiches

Do you remember a couple of years ago when we talked here about peanut butter sandwiches for grown-ups? We explored non-sweet savory combinations like garlic jelly or chutney and peanut butter. All that conversation prompted Ruth Thurston to send along a recipe for cheddar bread that she reported made terrific peanut butter sandwiches.

Recently I pulled the recipe out and mixed up a batch. It was met here with great approbation. Which means that I will have to make another batch, probably all too soon. That is a problem anyway with making home-made bread; you need one whole loaf for immediate devouring greedily with butter melting into the still hot slices.

And it is good with peanut butter, of course, or not. I tried it with grilled cheese sandwiches and it was wonderful. In this recipe, I used the sharpest cheddar I can find.

I found this recipe incredibly easy to use. I employed my mixer with the dough hook which meant minimal hand kneading. One rising in the bowl and another after I shaped it into a loaf. Easy peasey. It bakes quickly—thirty-five minutes at 375 degrees. Good grief. I can’t think of any excuse not to make it.

P.S. Thanks to all of you who have sent along mustard pickle recipes. It looks like a great assortment with some very promising possibilities.

Cheesy Bread for Delicious Sandwiches
Serves: Yields 1 loaf.
 
Ingredients
  • 1 ½ cups water
  • 2 packages dry yeast
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 4 to 4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups grated cheddar or parmesan cheese
Instructions
  1. Mix together water, yeast, sugar and salt and let rest for five minutes.
  2. Beat in 2 cups of flour until the batter is smooth, then add more another cup of flour until it is well incorporated.
  3. Fold in the shredded cheese.
  4. Add about another cup of flour then knead by hand or with a dough hook in a mixer until the dough is stiff, smooth, and springs back when you poke it with your finger.
  5. Let rise in a greased bowl until doubled.
  6. Punch down and re-knead briefly, adding as little flour as possible, and shaping into a loaf for a standard loaf pan. Let rise.
  7. When doubled, heat the oven to 375 degrees.
  8. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap the surface.
  9. Remove from pan and let cool.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.