KAF BakeAlong: Gruyere-Stuffed Crusty Loaves

Are you sugared out yet? I looked down my list of past blogs and all but two of the recipes are sweets, and one of those is dog treats! But baking doesn't always have to be about the sugar. Today, just a little bit late, I'm bringing you my attempt of King Arthur Flour's March BakeAlong recipe. I've been holding their email in my inbox all month long, drooling over the thought of melty, cheesy goodness, until I went home for Easter to bake this with my mom. And because we always end up having more that we want to do than we have time for, this BakeAlong sneaks in just a hair late at the beginning of April.

Behold: Gruyere-Stuffed Crusty Loaves! You probably haven't picked up from my other posts, since they've been vastly more sweet than savory, but I love cheese, and Gruyere, if not my very favorite, is definitely in my top five. So I am super excited to try this, and I hope you are too. (Never fear, though: if you can't get Gruyere, I'm confident this would be just as mouth watering with a variety of other cheeses.)

This recipe does take a fair amount of time, as yeast breads tend to do, and this one especially as it begins with a starter that rests overnight. But motivated by my love of cheese, I remain undaunted by the extra waiting time.

So here is how the recipe appears from KAF, but I encourage you to visit their website (link above) for both this recipe and others for a couple of reasons. The first is that if you don't like measuring your ingredients a certain way, they have a great feature that lets you select how you want the recipe to read (volume, ounces, or grams) and then it automatically converts the whole recipe for you. I set it to ounces before copying and pasting here, but sometimes I'll go back and forth because I like to weigh some things (like flour) and measure others volumetrically (like butter). The other reason I encourage you to look at the recipe directly on their website is because there are a few things they include as optional that I won't be using (like pizza dough flavor), because they didn't arrive in the mail in time to make this recipe. I've still copied them below, but have crossed them out for clarity.

STARTER

5 1/4 ounces King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

4 ounces cool water

DOUGH

all of the starter

9 ounces to 10 ounces lukewarm water*

1 teaspoon salt

14 3/4 ounces King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

1 tablespoon Pizza Dough Flavor (optional)

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

*Use the greater amount of water in winter, when conditions are dry; and the lesser amount in summer, when the weather is humid.

FILLING

10 ounces grated Gruyère cheese, or the grated/shredded cheese of your choice (sharp cheddar, or a mixture of provolone and mozzarella are tasty)

1 tablespoon garlic oil (optional)

1 tablespoon Pizza Seasoning (optional)

So that's what KAF says. It's a long process of directions, so I'm not going to put theirs in first and then paraphrase because "Ain't nobody got time for that!" and I know you don't want to read basically the same thing twice. You're reading this, so you must be smart, and since you're smart, you know that you can go look at the source recipe for the original instructions. Well done, you; high five!

Let's get started with this starter. That's too redundant. Commence the starter! No, too formal. Oh, forget it, let's go!

Mix together the flour, salt, yeast, and water in a bowl. I'm familiar with a sourdough starter which is a good deal softer than the starter for this recipe, but KAF says its supposed to be "stiff, not soft/liquid," so I'm going to go with it. Time for bed for both me and the starter. (Don't take it to bed with you. It doesn't need a nice soft mattress. The kitchen counter will be fine, and the only blanket it needs is a layer of plastic wrap to keep it from drying out.)

Okay! Now, by the magic of time travel the written word, it's morning! And look at this beautiful, puffy, bubbly starter critter (because yeast is a living thing, you know, like a tasty and productive little pet. Not too cuddly though...)! It definitely got its beauty rest overnight! Take the starter and add the rest of the flour, water, yeast, and salt. I'm not using the pizza dough flavor that it calls for here, but a quick glance through the KAF website informs me that it consists of "cheese powder, garlic, and natural flavors." I do love garlic and cheese, but I think this will be fine without a substitute here, so I'm cracking on, and getting kneading. I, personally, like to knead my bread by hand. If you'd rather not, you can knead it in your mixer with a dough hook or in a bread machine on the dough cycle.

When it's finished, the dough should be smooth and just a little sticky. It shouldn't stick in globs to your fingers (as pictured), and if it does, add a little more flour After this picture was taken, I added one more spoonful. I didn't measure it; it was just a regular eating spoon that I had on hand to scoop out more flour. Avoid adding too much flour, as a drier dough will change the texture of the final loaf. Ideally, the dough will be pretty easy to work with but cling a little to your counter and hands. It should roll off your hands when you rub them together and easily scrape off the counter with your bench scraper.  

When you're 'appy with that, put the dough into a lightly greased bowl (or tub or bucket or similar container; please no rain boots), cover it, and let it rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until it's about doubled in size. This is a good time to take your dog for a walk or do a load of laundry or play a board game (not Monopoly) with your family.

You can also get your filling prepared in this time (and still have time for shenanigans). And by "prepared" I mean grate your cheese. As a general rule, I try to avoid pre-grated cheese for, well just about anything. I know sometimes convenience is just worth it, but especially if you're going to be melting the cheese, do yourself a favor and get a block of cheese and grate it yourself. Shredded cheese is lightly coated in cellulose to prevent it sticking and "unshredding" itself. The cellulose doesn't affect the flavor of the cheese, but when the cheese itself melts, the cellulose doesn't, and it messes up the texture. I know it can be time consuming and physically tiring to hand-grate massive quantities of cheese, so pull out your trusty kitchen robot food processor and let it do the work (mine even has a special grating attachment, but if yours doesn't have, the regular blade will do the trick just fine). Another quick thought: shredded cheese is another one of those ingredients that is best measured by weight rather than volume, because there isn't a good standard on how tightly packed a cup of shredded cheese should be. 

After you've shredded your cheese, and maybe won a game or two of Catan, and your dough is nice and big, deflate it and turn it out. KAF recommends doing this onto a lightly floured surface or onto a piece of parchment, particularly if the dough is on the stickier side. I like to use this rolling mat for all kinds of things because it has measurements on it, and I'm really bad at estimating, but you do you. Manipulate the dough (roll, pat, squeeze, stretch; blackmail and guilt-tripping are less effective) into a rectangle about 9" x 12".  It should be about 3/4" thick. At this point KAF says to either spritz the dough with water or brush it with garlic oil. I didn't have any garlic oil, but I brushed it with a little bit of olive oil before sprinkling on all that scrumptious cheese. I also didn't use their specific pizza seasoning, but I looked at the listed ingredients of theirs and made my own, guessing on the ratios.

Satisfied with the sprinkle of my cheese, I rolled up the dough from one of the long sides. I also scooped up the cheese that tried to make a break for it and poked it back in before sealing the whole thing up. You can see in the picture of the seam how the one corner looks more floury and didn't seal up as well. This is another reason to avoid adding too much flour. The slightly stickier dough sticks to itself pretty well and seals up easily. So stick it together and put it somewhere convenient with the seam down (like a baking sheet lined with parchment or on the counter where you were working), cover it, and let it do its second rise for about another hour to hour and a half. It should be not quite doubled in size, just a little puffy (much like how one feels after a night of too much pizza and beer...).

When the loaf is puffy and the oven is hot (425°F), it's time to cut the loaves. KAF says you can cut it into either two big ones or four mini ones, but then the way they show the loaves positioned, I'm not sure how the two are supposed to sit. Also, even though they're called "mini-loaves" they're a decent size, plenty big enough to share.

Open the rolls slightly to expose the cheese and spritz them with some warm water to help the crust develop, and in 25 to 35 minutes (with a pan rotation halfway through, around the 15 minute mark), it's cheesy carbohydrate heaven! I didn't have a spritzer bottle so I just wet my hands and sprinkled them that way a couple of times, and it seemed to come out alright. 

Okay, I'm being modest, they came out better than "alright." I think this was the best bread I've ever made. The texture was outstanding, with a good sturdy crust and a beautifully soft and chewy inside stuffed with melty cheese and herbs. It was amazing straight out of the oven and eaten with our Easter dinner, and later that evening, it was marvelous cold. The pizza seasoning made me want to dip it in a tomato based pasta sauce, which I did. This was a good decision. I think it would be just as good with any number of other cheese varieties and an adjustment of spices to complement. 

Long story short: make this bread. You won't be sorry. And you'll look at the finished product and think to yourself, "Woah, no way! I made this? Are you sure I didn't sneak out to a bakery and purchase this?" And after you think that, you'll gobble it up and sigh contentedly with a belly full of bread and cheese.  And then you'll want to make it all again.