Ham and Cheese Bread

大きなパンが作れる本(Big Bread Making Book) by Kimie Oguro

Even the name of the book promise big bread, it’s not the same “big” as we know. I found that the recipe is the same quantity as other book, 300g of the flour, but when baking in a small oven this is the big bread that can be bake easily in the oven. She offers us 3 kinds of bread, simple, rich and natural. Simple is the country style bread like Foccacia (simple, with topping and with filling) English muffin (using hot plate) bread using oven toaster and fry pan (with curry recipe). Rich is the bread with egg more fat and sweeter flavor like dried fruit bread, party bread (bread with seed), ham and cheese bread, braids bread and fried bread. The last one natural is the bread that uses whole wheat flour, fruit and nut. Like most of Japanese cookbook, the first part of every chapter is an illustration of how to make the bread from beginning to finish. There is a lot of illustration in each kind of breads, which is very good because each of them need different preparation. The bread’s picture look delicious and it give you how to make a meal from the bread that you make, like serve as breakfast or snack. This book has a word kantan (that mean easy) on the cover so it’s good for the beginner or anyone who like to make simple bread.

For this ham and cheese bread, I adapt the recipe a little bit to suite all my family taste and I hope you will like it too. I don’t think that the book make a big bread as it said because I have to double the recipe of this delicious bread or it’s not enough.

Ham and Cheese Bread

(Makes 28x10cm loaf)

Bread
300 g	Bread Flour
6 g	Instant dried yeast
20 g	Sugar
5 g	Salt
30 g	Unsalted butter (soft)
210-220 g	One egg plus whole milk
Filling
100 g	Ham (cut into small pieces)
50 g	Cheddar Cheese(cut into small pieces)
Topping
50 g	Onion (sliced)
5 tbsp	Mayonnaise
50 g	Gruyère Cheese (Grated)

Put half of the flour and yeast in a bowl, whisk to combine, add the sugar and salt whisk again. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the bowl, use large spoon to mix everything together. Put all the remaining flour in, and knead briefly to bring all the ingredients together. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead, you will see the dough will be elastic after about 5 minutes, add the butter at that time, knead for another 5 minutes or until the dough is soft and pliable.

Put the dough into a light buttered bowl. Let the dough rise in a warm place until double in size (can be 1 hour or 1 hour and a half check often depend on the temperature).

Line a baking paper in the pan and set aside.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough to a rectangle. Scatter ham and cheddar cheese all over the dough and roll the dough toward you starting at the top, gently pressing as you go to form a tight log. Cut the dough into 6 pieces, then place the dough, cut side down in the prepared pan

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Meanwhile mix the topping ingredients together in a bowl (you can adjust the taste or increase the mayonnaise like me).

Let the dough rise until almost double in size; pour the topping over the top. Bake for 10 minutes then reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for 10-15 minutes more.

Adaptation from: 大きなパンが作れる本(Big Bread Making Book) by Kimie Oguro