Double Cheese and Chive Loaf

This is another fabulous bread from master baker, Dan Lepard, taken from his wonderful book, Short & Sweet. A fantastic book with bread, cakes, cookies, desserts recipes. I have made several recipes from this book and have great results. 

Double Cheese and Chive Loaf recipe is one of the variations from his basic White Farmhouse Tin Loaf recipe, where he has added Parmesan and Cheddar cheese, with some chives, to make an entirely new bread, resulting in this fabulous tasty loaf. He has other variations which you can find from guardian.com .

Instead of kneading the dough like you usually would, Dan Lepard uses his easy method of fold, push and turn, which is repeated at 15 minutes interval, thrice. A good idea  to get this book to learn about his simple method and other tips, plus tons of fabulous recipes!

I reduce the salt to half teaspoon, taking into account of the salty cheeses used. For the chives, I have used Chinese garlic chives from my garden pot. 

The bread bakes to a lovely golden brown and rises beautifully.

With moist, soft crumbs and tastes just fabulous, good to eat on its own. We had this loaf as a sandwich bread with slices of ham.

The holes where the diced Cheddar has partially melted. Nice!

The recipe can be found at guardian.com, with some other variations as suggested by the author.

Double Cheese and Chive Loaf
(Short & Sweet, by Dan Lepard)
For the sponge :
225ml warm water
1 teaspoon fast action yeast
175gm strong white flour

For the dough :
175gm strong white flour, plus extra for shaping and dusting
1 teaspoon fine salt
25gm unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the tin
50gm grated Parmesan
200-250gm Cheddar, cut into 1cm dice
a small bunch of fresh chives, snipped into 1cm lengths
oil for kneading

Get the sponge ready by pouring the warm water into a mixing bowl, stirring in the yeast and adding 175gm flour. Stir it together, cover the bowl and leave for 2-4 hours, or even overnight. When you're ready to make the dough, put the second batch of flour into a bowl, add the salt and rub the butter through until it vanishes, so there are no little lumps floating around. Add the grated Parmesan, diced Cheddar and chives. Pour in the yeast batter, mix the whole lot up into a big sticky clump of dough, then scrape the bits off your fingers, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave for 10 minutes. Knead the dough (fold, push and turn method), repeating after 15 and 30 minutes, then cover and leave for a further 30 minutes.

Butter and flour a large deep loaf tin, about 19cm long. Lightly flour the work surface, roll the dough into a rectangle 2cm thick that measures (from left to right) slightly less than the length of the tin; roll it up tightly and place seam-side down in the tin. Cover with a tea towel and leave until increased in size by half.

Heat the oven to at least 220C/200C fab/425F/Gas 7, thouogh if you can get it 20C hotter even better. Steam the oven if you like , dust flour over the dough with a small fine sieve or tea-strainer, slash the loaf down the centre about 1cm deep with a sharp blade or sharp serrated knife, and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 200C/fan 180C/390F/Gas 6, and bake for a further 20-25 minutes until the crust is the colour you like.

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