Gruyère Cheese Bread

This Gruyère Cheese Bread is dripping with melty cheese and is absolutely delicious.

The dough for this Gruyère Cheese Bread is high hydration, which means it can be little hard to manage, but you really shouldn't stress too much about achieving perfect looking loaves.

After all, the goal is to have delicious cheese oozing out of every crevice of this bread.

According to King Arthur Flour, this recipe comes from French Pastry School in Chicago, and is one of the school's favorite loaves. The bread requires a starter that they mix and allow it to bubble up at room temperature overnight. The next day, they mix the dough and knead it, and after the first rise, they roll up a bunch of delicious cheese into the dough, like a giant cinnamon roll.

This bread was a little awkward and messy for me to shape, but it was well worth the clumsy execution because this bread is just amazing.  You just have to work quickly and not worry about how the bread looks. Besides, it's not going to last very long anyway.

If you like cheese bread, give this fabulous recipe a try.

While I used Gruyere cheese, you can use any good melting cheese you choose (such as cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella, or provolone). I added a tablespoon of King Arthur Flour's pizza seasoning to the cheese and it was amazing. To make it yourself, try mixing some granulated garlic, dried onions, salt, pepper, some crushed red pepper, and some Italian season together to taste.

Update, February 2018: I just made this bread again to update this post, and it's just as delicious as I remember. I took new photos and updated the post to make it printable. It was well worth the revisit.

This is not the easiest dough to handle, but the challenge is so worth it.

More cheesy bread recipes:

• Crusty cheese and onion bread
• Jalapeño, Cheese, and Corn bread
• Cheddar cheese and black pepper bread
• No Knead jalapeno cheesy Dutch oven bread

Yield: 4 small loaves

Gruyère Cheese Bread

ingredients:

Starter

• 149 grams unbleached bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 113 grams cool water

Dough

• All of the starter
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons to 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water, depending on the humidity
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 418 grams bread flour
• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

Cheese Filling

• 283 grams Gruyère cheese, grated
• 1 tablespoon of a mixture of herbs and spices of your choice (optional)

instructions:

1. The night before you make the bread, mix the starter ingredients in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit overnight at room temperature. 
2. The next day, mix the starter with the rest of the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer for about seven minutes, until smooth. 
3. Let the dough rise in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap until almost doubled in size, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. 
4. Gently remove the dough from the bowl and pat it into a 9 inch by 12 inch rectangle. 
5. Sprinkle the dough with the shredded cheese mixture. 
6. Starting with the 12 inch side, roll the dough tightly into a log, and seal the seam by pinching it closed. 
7. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 
8. Cover the log loosely with oiled plastic wrap, and let rise until puffy, about 60 to 90 minutes. 
9. When the dough is ready, cut the log into 4 pieces, and stand them on their ends on the parchment lined baking sheet (like big cinnamon rolls). The cheese will kind of spill out, but that's okay. 
10. Mist the loaves with water, and place the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes until the loaves are golden brown and the interior reaches about 200 degrees F. 
11. Cool the loaves on a wire rack. 

http://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2013/04/gruyere-cheese-bread-avid-bakers.html