Garlic Butter Cheesy Bread {Delish Dish Recipe 4}

I ended making this delicious bread bread for my sister’s Christmas Eve dinner. I mean you can never go wrong with garlic butter and cheese with bread, its like an unwritten delicious rule. haha
As I’ve been cooking lonver I’ve ventured to make more bread, and I have to say it takes a lot of percision and patients….the later being one I’m not great at. If something isn’t cooking fast enough I’m alway like “lets try the microwave!” Which by the way, never works. haha

So follow this closely, measure the temperature accurately and be patient when things aren’t rising as quickly as you want them to.

Garlic Butter Cheesy Bread | Delish Dish 4

Serves: 6-8
Total Prep Time: 1.5-2 hours
Total Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup warm water (about 110-120 degrees Fahrenheit)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 envelope active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups all purpose flour (Original recipe calls for bread flour, but mine turned out fine without it, but I used non-bleached, non-enriched flour, which Wal Mart actually carries, or you can just get organic.)
• canola spray or olive oil, for greasing surfaces
• 1/3 pounds  or 6oz cheddar (or any other hard cheese you’d like to use)
• 1/2 cups garlic butter (I made my own, see recipe here)
  

Directions:

1. Measure water temperature, make sure it is 110-120 degrees Fahrenheit. Microwave until it is at this temperature. You don’t want it cooler or warmer otherwise dough will not rise. Also when measuring with a thermometer make sure to not let it touch the container as it will take the temperature of the the container and not the water.
2. In a large bowl, stir water, honey and yeast together. Let yeast proof (aka sit untouched) 5 minutes.
3. Once you know yeast is active (it will get slightly fuzzy or bubbly), stir in salt and the flour in 1/4 cup increments. If you are using a stand mixer, be sure to not increase your speed higher than a 2 or ‘stir’. (I always have trouble with mixers and dough so I just mix this by hand.)
4. Once dough starts pulling away from the sides and the bowl seems to be pretty clean either A) (IF USING AUTOMATIC MIXER) set a timer for 5 minutes and walk away. Let the machine knead the dough. After 5 minutes, dough should be smooth and tacky but when touched shouldn’t leave any dough on your fingers. B) (IF USING HAND MIXER OR BY HAND) Knead dough for five minutes. To knead dough, fold in half and press down with bottom of your hand or the heal of your hand. Repeat for 5 minutes until dough is smooth and tacky but doesn’t stick to your hands anymore. If you weren’t able to fit all the flour when mixing by hand you can add the left over flour in at this step.
5. Grease a clean medium bowl, place dough in bowl and flip once to coat the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size. Placing dough in a warm environment is the key to any bread rising. A trick I found is to turn your microwave on for 2 minutes while it is empty. Then wet a cloth with very warm water, cover the dough and place in microwave. Make sure to never turn your microwave on with the dough inside! Another alternative is to place dough in a small room with a space heater going. If you do cover with a wet warm cloth make sure to reheat the cloth as it’ll get cold if you are doing this in the winter.
6. After dough has doubled in size, (this could take 30 minutes to 2 hours so be patient) punch down dough with your fist and cut into two equal portions.
7. Form into two long baguettes the length of the cookie sheet. You can twist the bread as you shape it into a baguette shape. Cover with plastic wrap and rise 30 minutes (see step 5 for tricks to making sure dough rises well.)
8. Once dough has risen a second time start to preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place dough close to the oven where it’s nice and warm. Once oven is preheated, remove plastic wrap, from the dough reduce oven to 350F, put the bread into the oven and bake 20 minutes.
9. In the meantime, slice the cheese into thin slices and melt the butter.
10. Pull loaves of bread out of the oven after 20 minutes and brush with the melted garlic butter.
11. Bake another 5-7 minutes or until bread begins to turn a golden brown. Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes.
12. Cut 1-inch slices  3/4 of the the way through the loaves. (Make sure not to cut all the way to the bottom. Brush garlic butter in between each slice and fill with a slice of cheese. Bake another 3-5 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
13. Serve warm, and enjoy the garlic butter cheesy bread! 🙂

I originally found this recipe http://www.laurenslatest.com/hasselback-garlic-cheesy-bread/