Cottage Cheese Dill Loaf

I was in a cheesy mood, but I didn't want an overtly cheesy bread, so I decided to use cottage cheese. By the time it was mixed into the bread and cooked, it disappeared into the dough, but it made a nice moist and slightly chewy loaf.

I also used whey left over from yogurt-making, but water is fine.

I added dill as well. Just a teaspoon. If you look carefully, you can see flecks of green in the bread. It added a pleasantly herby flavor without screaming "Dill!" at the top of its yeasty lungs.

I let this bread rest overnight in the refrigerator, but if you're in a hurry you can bake it the same day. Just let ir rise once, knead it and form it, and let it rise again before slashing and baking.

Cottage Cheese Dill Bread

1 cup whey (or water)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
3 cups bread flour (more, as needed)
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry dill weed
2 tablespoons olive oil

In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the whey (or water) sugar, yeast, and one cup of the bread flour. Set aside until it gets bubbly.

Add the rest of the bread flour, cottage cheese, salt and dill. Knead with the bread hook until the dough begins to get elastic. Add the olive oil and continue kneading. The dough should be smooth, elastic, and only slightly sticky. If it is too sticky, add more bread flour, as needed. The amount you need will depend on how wet your cottage cheese was. I needed about a quarter cup more.

When the dough is thoroughly kneaded, drizzle some olive oil into a plastic bag and put the dough into the bag, making sure that it's completely coated with the oil and not sticking to the bag. Put the bag of dough in the fridge to rest over night.

The next day, massage the dough in the bag briefly, then let the dough come up to room temperature (or close - it doesn't need to be exact). The dough will rise while it's warming up.

Sprinkle some cornmeal on a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

When the dough has warmed and has risen, flour your work surface, remove the dough from the bag and knead it briefly before forming it into your preferred shape. Move it to the baking sheet and cover it with plastic wrap. Let it rise until doubled.

Slash the loaf as desired and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes until well browned.

Cool completely on a rack before slicing.

This appeared on Serious Eats and has been submitted to Yeastspotting.

Road Trip: Part 9

Waking up in your old home town is a funny thing, particularly if you’ve been gone for a long time. There’s an anticipation of seeing all the old paces, and the dread of finding out that landmarks and old favorites are now gone.

A rib restaurant where I wanted to pick up some sauce had been closed for several years. My old grade school was in the process of being torn down. The place where my husband and I met was gone and the place where we got married had been replaced by condos.

One local landmark was still standing although it had been battered a bit over the years. I went to Gene’s and Jude’s to pick up hot dogs for lunch, and the dogs were still the same. I snapped some photos of the outside of the building and snapped a ew more while I was in line, but when I got to the counter and ordered, I was hoping to get some good shots of the hot dogs being assembled. It was something I’d seen since I was a kid, and I figured it was worth capturing for the blog. But then I was told that photos weren’t allowed in the building. I could take them outside, they told me, but no photos inside.

Oh well, at least I escaped with my hot dogs.

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Road Trip: Part 8

Morning broke early. I was curious about a grocery store behind the Chinese restaurant, so we headed over there to see if it was open. The sign on the door helpfully said that it was open “am to pm.” It was ten to eight, so we figured we’d give them a chance to open and drove down the street to see what else we might find.


A small bakery caught my eye, and I went in. It looked like a real bakery and smelled like a real bakery. A display case held a decent variety of tempting sweet rolls. I already had my thermos filled with coffee from the hotel, so I bought a maple-frosted long john and a giant cherry turnover.

There weren’t any prices listed, but I expected that the two would cost five or six dollars. Nope. Just $2.55 including the tax. Best bargain of the trip, and decent baked goods. The coffee, by the way, was fair and I had to settle for Coffee Mate instead of cream. But it was hot and fresh and free, so I can’t complain.

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