Okay so I was going to put up my dill bread recipe but I forgot my notebook at home. Thankfully I made the stuff last night so I should remember most of what went into it. MEMORY GO
Dill Bread
Yield: one 9x5 loaf or two just-shy-of-8x4 loaves
The dry goods:
3 C flour, plus more to bring the dough together.
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 3/4 tsp Rapid-Rise yeast. That's one pack of the stuff that comes in threes.
The wet goods:
1 C large-curd not-lowfat cottage cheese
1 large egg
2 Tbsp sugar
The flava:
1 Tbsp fresh dill (or 1 tsp dill seed but it's better with the freshness)
1 Tbsp wheat germ
1/2 C onion, minced as finely as you can get it
Okay so.
Sift all the dry stuff together, then mix in the flavorings. Beat the egg and sugar into the cottage cheese. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff and mix until it comes together. It's probably going to be an adhesive mess, because it seems no matter how much flour goes into the dough it never stops being sticky. Probably from using cottage cheese instead of milk.
Anyway once all the ingredients are mixed, oil a big mixing bowl and drop the dough in. Flip it over to coat with oil (to keep the dough from drying), cover with plastic wrap (to keep it warm), and let it sit in the warmest place you can find for about half an hour to proof the yeast.
Take the dough back out of the bowl and knead it. You will constantly be adding flour at this point, otherwise the dough will stick to your hands, the kneading surface, the kitchen cabinets, the cat, whatever it touches. Once the dough is pliable and only merely tacky, oil and cover it in a bowl again and leave it in a warm place to let it rise until the blob doubles in size.
Take out your dough, punch it down, and shape it into a loaf or cut in half and shape into two loaves, you can do what you want I'm not your damn mother. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise one more time until it doubles in size again.
Preheat the oven to 350F. Brush the risen loaf/ves with egg wash or milk, sprinkle with dill seeds, slash, and bake until it gets a golden-brown crust and pulls away from the sides of the pan a little -- about 45 minutes for a 9x5 loaf, a little over 35 for two 8x5 loaves.
Pull from the oven and resist the urge to cut into it until it's cooled for about half an hour.
Tips for great success:
Use AP flour if you want it tender, high-gluten bread flour if you like it chewy, a mix of both if you wanna Red Mage this shit I dunno. I like it tender.
If you don't mince the onion finely enough, the finished product will taste more like onion than dill. And that's fine. Call it onion bread instead. It's still tasty.
Yes, three rises -- one to wake the yeast up, one to let the yeast multiply, and one to leaven the bread. I don't know what's so "rapid" about Rapid-Rise yeast but taking that much time makes the bread taste better so that's what I use.
