Cheese and Herb Happy Bread

I so enjoy the bread baking community. For example, I learned about this bread by hanging out with bread bakers online. The recipe for this bread was contributed by Yuko to the Artisan Bread Bakers Facebook page Bread of the Month (also known as the BOM). Yuko found this bread recipe from Maya's blog, Foodiva's Kitchen. Maya adapted the recipe from Eva Toneva.

What I love most is that Yuko lives in Japan, Maya lives in Borneo, and Eva  originally wrote the recipe in Bulgarian. How cool is that? Eva originally called it Holiday Bread, and Maya renamed it Happy Bread. I'm sticking with that because just looking at it makes me happy. 

I used the dough to make a savory cheese and herb bread. I used a 10 inch cake pan, thinking that it would be large enough to allow the bread to spread. It grew larger than I expected, so it looks more like cinnamon rolls with the outside petals kind of squished. If you want your bread to be more free form, bake it on a baking sheet. 

You can make this bread into sweet rolls, savory rolls, or just bake the dough as is. It's really flexible. 

Food Diva's Kitchen has some excellent demos of how to shape the bread. I don't think I could describe it any better, so check out her blog. 

Cheese and Herb Happy Bread

Ingredients

2 tsp instant yeast

1 T sugar

100ml/1/3 C plus 1 1/2 T warm milk

500 g unbleached all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Scant 2/3 C warm milk

2 T olive oil

1/2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

3 1/2 ounces melted and cooled butter

10 g onion flakes

5 grams dill seeds

2 grams dried parsley flakes

50 grams parmesan cheese

50 grams Monterey Jack cheese

Directions

• Combine the yeast, sugar, and 100 ml of milk.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the flour and salt together.
• Add the eggs, the 2/3 C milk, olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and the milk/sugar/yeast mixture.
• With the dough hook, knead for about 10 minutes. 
• Place the dough in an oiled dough rising bucket or bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise until it has doubled in size, about an hour. 
• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and deflate it. 
• Divide the dough into 8 equal parts. A scale is really helpful here. 
• Roll each piece of dough into a  thin 1/8 inch rectangle. Each rectangle should be about the same size, with the longer side being about 6 to 8 inches.
• Brush four of the rectangles with the melted butter and distribute the onion, parsley, and cheese equally on each. You will have more butter left to use later. Set it aside.
• Place the other four rectangles on top of the the ones to which you have just added the butter and cheese/herb mixture.
• Roll the dough into four cylinders. 

• Cut 1 1/2 inches off of the ends of each cylinder
• Cut the middle of the cylinder into 4 triangles. 
• Preheat the oven to 360 degrees F.
• Grease a large cake pan or baking sheet and arrange the end pieces cut sides down in a circle with one piece in the center. 
• Place the triangles all of the way around the pieces like petals of a flower. 
• Brush the dough with any leftover melted butter. 
• Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for about 40 minutes.

• Bake the bread for for about 30 minutes, reducing the oven temperature to 325 degrees F after 10 minutes. 
• Allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.
• Most delicious at this point. 

Enjoy!

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