This garlic cheesy bread is the number one most popular pin of all time on Pinterest, according to Repinly. It’s had close to 100,000 repins, which is pretty crazy to think about, and was originally pinned by Mandy Wakeman.I had a feeling this would be good, seeing as it’s a combo of bread, cheese, butter and garlic – seriously, what’s not to like? I was a little worried about how the bread would turn out though, seeing as I don’t have a stand mixer and kind of winged it with my food processor based on prior knowledge of making pizza dough.
To start with, I substituted all-purpose flour for bread flour. I did a little research about the difference between the two, and learned that bread flour has slightly more gluten and therefore generally creates a more chewy and/or lofty bread than all-purpose flour. In most cases, all-purpose flour can be substituted for bread flour, but you don’t want to go the other way around and sub in bread flour for all-purpose flour. Seeing as I don’t make a ton of bread regularly, I opted to use the all-purpose flour I had rather than buy a bag of bread flour. My bread definitely didn’t end up as large as the photos from the original pin, which I think probably had something to do with this substitution, but the texture seemed fine.
As I said, I made the bread using a food processor instead of a stand mixer. I followed all the steps in the recipe up to the point where you leave the dough to knead itself for 5 minutes. Once the dough had clumped into a ball and pulled away from the sides of the bowl, as shown in the image on the left, I stopped the food processor and kneaded the dough by hand for about 5 minutes. Then I continued with the recipe as described, placing the dough in an oiled bowl and covering it with a towel for an hour, until it had doubled in size.
Next, I twisted the dough into two loaves, as described in the instructions, covered it again with the towel and let it rise some more. My dough felt pretty dry at this point, likely because I used some extra flour while I was kneading it by hand. I imagine this wouldn’t have been the case with the stand mixer method.
While the dough was rising and in the oven for its first stretch of baking, I made my garlic herb butter. The original recipe on Lauren’s Latest used Kerrygold Garlic and Herb Butter, which has chives, parsley, garlic, and other fresh herbs and spices in it. As a substitute, I found a recipe for roasted garlic butter and another for parsley butter on the Real Simple website, and combined them to create a garlic herb butter for this recipe. These were both very simple recipes, and I definitely prefer roasted garlic to the stronger raw garlic taste that can come with just mixing crushed garlic and butter together.
To make the butter, I roasted two cloves of garlic with their skins on in the oven for a half hour, with some olive oil and salt. After removing the skins, I mixed the roasted cloves with fresh chopped parsley, a stick of unsalted butter at room temperature, and a pinch of salt, and mashed it all together with a wooden spoon until it was evenly mixed. I then melted the butter and brushed the par-baked bread with it before putting it back in the oven for another 5 minutes.
For my cheese, I used Trader Joe’s Unexpected Cheddar, which I am a bit obsessed with. It’s been my go-to recently for cheese and crackers, so it was the obvious choice when I saw that this recipe called for white cheddar cheese.
It was surprising difficult to get the butter down into the slices I’d made in the bread for the cheese. I think I probably should have given it a bit longer to cool, because the buttering process was made more difficult by how hot the bread was to the touch.
After putting the cheese into the sliced bread, I put the loaves back into the over for about 3 minutes to let the cheese melt. I didn’t use as much cheese as the recipe called for – I used closer to a quarter of a pound instead of a third. As a result, the cheesiness of the bread wasn’t as extreme as it appeared in the original pin, but the combination of the butter and the cheese that was there was more than rich enough. The only thing I think I’d do differently if I made this again would be to get my hands on a stand mixer, and maybe try it with bread flour to see how much of a difference it makes. Overall though, a good recipe to keep in the repertoire.
Hasselback Garlic Cheesy Bread
from Lauren’s Latest | makes 2 loaves
1 cup warm water
1 Tbsp Honey
1 envelope active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups bread flour (can substitute all-purpose flour)
olive oil, for greasing surfaces
⅓ pounds sharp white cheddar, or any other cheese you prefer
½ cups garlic butter (see recipe below)
In a large bowl, stir water, honey and yeast together. Let yeast proof 5 minutes, until it starts to foam. Once you know the yeast is active, 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’. Once dough starts pulling away from the sides and the bowl seems to be pretty clean, 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. Grease the bowl and the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size. Punch down dough and cut into two equal portions. Form into two long baguettes the length of the cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 30 minutes. Start to preheat oven to 400° F and place dough close to the oven where it’s nice and warm. If you will be making garlic herb butter, begin to do so while the oven is preheating. Once the oven is preheated, remove plastic wrap from the dough and reduce oven to 350F, then put the bread into the oven and bake for 20 minutes. In the meantime, slice the cheese into thin slices and melt the butter. Pull loaves of bread out of the oven after 20 minutes and brush with the melted garlic butter. Bake another 5-7 minutes or until bread begins to turn a golden brown. Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes or more. Cut 1-inch slices 3/4′s of the the way through the loaves. 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. Serve immediately.
Garlic and Herb Butter
from Real Simple | makes 1/2 cup
2 cloves garlic, skins left on
1/2 Tbsp olive oil
1/8 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
3/8 tsp kosher salt
8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Preheat oven to 350° F. Place the garlic on a small sheet of foil and pull up the foil’s edges to form a pouch. Pour the oil over the garlic and sprinkle with about 1/8 teaspoon of the salt. Roast for 35 minutes. Allow to cool slightly. Place the butter in a small bowl. Squeeze the garlic out of its skins onto the butter. Add the remaining salt and the chopped parsley and mash with a wooden spoon to combine.
