Yesterday I was feeling ambitious and decided to tackle the daunting task of making bread from scratch! I love home made bread, but ever since our bread maker broke quite a few years ago, I had never made another loaf of bread.  Making it from scratch was an new adventure.

I searched through one of my mom’s favorite cook books  for bread Vegetarian -a cook’s guide to the sensational world of vegetarian cooking with 500 recipes edited by Valerie Ferguson. I found a recipe that I liked on page 240 for Spiral herb bread. I changed the recipe a lot, since I didn’t feel like going to the food store to buy extra ingredients that I didn’t happen to already have.

My bread was a spectacular treat fresh out of the oven. It looked beautiful and tasted very flavorful. Since this bread is half whole wheat it’s also very filling! I served it with spaghetti.

The only thing I would change the next time I make this recipe is to put some onion actually in the dough of the bread rather then just in the spiral part of the bread. I may experiment with different types of onions as well.

Here is my morphed version of the recipe.

Onion and Cheese Spiral Bread
*Makes 2 medium sized loafs of bread

3 cups all purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp quick rise yeast
2 ½ cups lukewarm skim milk (microwave for 1 minute)
Olive oil for greasing/spraying
1 medium to large white onion
1 garlic clove
1 egg beaten
1 tbsp Salt
1 cup grated low fat cheddar cheese
Dried basil
Dried parsley
Dried oregano
You will also need plastic wrap

Combine the flours in a bowl. Add the salt and mix well. Add the yeast and stir until well combined. Stir in about ½ or a bit less of the grated cheddar cheese. Add the lukewarm milk. Knead the dough for 10 minutes until it looks like this.

Get a large sheet of plastic wrap. Spray some olive oil over it evenly. Wrap your dough in it, and let it rise for 2 hours or 1 hour if you try this trick (Preheat your oven to 100 degrees F. Once it reaches this temperature turn off the oven and put your wrapped up dough in it’s original bowl [if it’s stainless steel] in the oven for one hour. Don’t try this with a plastic bowl!). Your dough should have at least doubled in size now, like this.

While the dough is rising mince the onion and garlic clove. Fry it in at least 2 tsp olive oil until lightly browned with a generous amount of basil, parsley, and oregano. Remove from heat, set aside.

Remove plastic wrap. Divide dough into two balls. Roll each ball out separately into a large rectangle. Spread egg over each rolled out rectangle. Now spread the onion and herb mixture over the egg evenly. Sprinkle on the remaining cheese, and roll each rectangle up into a roll. Like this (yes the shape is a bit odd, but it seems to change after it bakes).

Place in two separate greased bread/loaf pans. Place the greased plastic wrap back on the dough while it rises. Let rise in a warm place until the dough rises to the level of the top of the loaf pan. Remove plastic wrap. Bake for about 45-55 minutes or until golden brown on top, and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from pans, and cool on a wire rack. Serve warm, or store for later.

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