Cheddar Wheat Bread, Take 1

The goal: a delicious bread using Quebec Vintage Cheddar (a lovely, lovely cheese).

The beginning: I chose a wheat bread recipe because I happened to have wheat flour on hand, and it is always my inclination to go "whole grain" when I can. Also, the initial goal of this test was to determine if Quebec Vintage Cheddar was even suitable for bread, so the make-up of the bread itself wasn't as important. Although I did want a recipe I could potentially jump from.

The process: I had about 2/3 of a cup of diced Quebec Vintage, and about 1/3 of a cup of Vlaskaas (a gouda). I decided to test both cheeses, and since my recipe yielded two loaves, I couldn't just mix the cheeses into the dough. So I followed the wheat dough recipe as written through the first rise. Then, before panning the dough, I rolled the two dough portions out flat, sprinkled cheese on each, then rolled them, cinnamon-roll style. Each roll went into a pan, and the recipe was finished as written.

The result: Quebec Vintage Cheddar in wheat bread is magically delicious. Vlaskaas doesn't quite hold up to the wheat flavor, but look for future tests with other recipes. The Vlaskaas loaf also did not have enough cheese. I'm not convinced that the rolled-dough method is best, especially as the finished product tended to break where it had been rolled. But both cheeses melted beautifully, and reviews by the fortunate few were excellent.

More (and recipe) to come . . .