Dilly Bread (BBD #40)

The theme for this month's Bread Baking Day was announced as Bread with Curds.  Not being familiar with curds at all, I was a little worried at first, until I went back to zorra's announcement of this BBD, and read that we could use curds, cottage cheese, quark or paneer.  Whew!  I was relieved .  I love cottage cheese and have used it in bread in the past, just not very much.  My favorite way to eat cottage cheese is a small bowlful, with a large dollup of apple butter stirred in.  Mmmmmm.

Anyway, I went back to the internet and as I was looking around, I found a recipe at The Pioneer Woman Cooks called Jan's Dilly Bread.  I liked the looks of this recipe, because it brought back fond memories of the Cottage Dill Bread from the recipe booklet that came with my old ABM3100 Welbilt Bread Machine.  I made this recipe often (back when all my breads came from my bread machine).  I loved the taste of the dill and minced onion in the bread and how moist and soft it always turned out.  So here's the dilly bread I made for Bread Baking Day #40, 

Jan's Dilly Bread

slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Ingredients
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cups warm water
1 cup cottage cheese, heated to lukewarm
1Tbsp + 1tsp honey
1 Tbsp dried minced onion
1 Tbsp softened butter
1 Tbsp dried dill weed
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 whole egg
1 cup white-whole wheat (I used King Arthur Flour)
1 1/4 cup bread flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. 
Combine the warm cottage cheese, honey, minced onion, dill weed, salt, soda, and egg. 
Stir to combine.
Stir in yeast mixture gently, then add flour gradually, stirring gently.

I did all my mixing with my dough whisk and then at the end I turned the dough out onto my silicone mat to knead it a tad by hand, and to work in a little extra flour.  I placed the dough in a lightly greased, clean bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and let it rise for 1 1/2 hours until it doubled in bulk.  I turned it back out onto my mat, gently punched the dough down, gently shaped it into a round and placed it into a well greased, 9 inch cake pan.

I covered the dough again with plastic wrap and it rose for another 50 minutes on the counter.  It puffed up nicely, filled out the pan completely and rose above the top of the cake pan.  I then placed the pan into my preheated (350°) oven and baked it for ~30 minutes on a lower rack of the oven.  The bread started to brown a little too much, so after about 20 minutes, I moved the pan to a higher rack in the oven and it was done in 30 minutes even, though the directions had said 40-50 min.  After it came out of the oven, I turned the bread out onto my rack and brushed the top with melted butter.

This comforting bread went really well with Girlichef's Tomato Garlic Soup w/ Cheese Tortellini.  With the cooler weather we had this past week it made a perfect meal. 

To complete the perfect meal, for dessert we consumed the biggest Nutty Peanut Butter Cookies I've ever had.  These were made from the recipe on page 113, of The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread.  The cookies were about 4 inches in diameter.  (Hubby was being silly as I was trying to take pictures).



I had so much fun with this bread.  If you'd like to participate in Bread Baking Day #40, go to Zorra's blog to get the details.  If you'd like to see the roundup of all the different breads baked with curd, be sure to stop by Zorra's shortly after June 1 to view them.