My Favorite Soup Bread and a Cheese Update

Okay so I finally tried out my mozzarella kit. Along with the recipe came a bunch of recipes to use the moz and to use the whey that otherwise you’d just throw away. So I did the recipe juggle thing, you know where you try to do more than one new recipe at once and time them right. Yeah this doesn’t usually work for me. So I’m sad to report that after a wasted gallon of milk I have no delicious fresh mozzarella. I do believe I know what went wrong and I have another gallon waiting for take two. (update: I did nothing wrong the kit was a rip off read my update below)

The good news though is I love love love the bread recipe that came with my kit. And as you guys who have been visiting my blog for a while know I’ve kind of been obsess with slow rise, all day or longer breads. So the snob in me thought I’ll just make this lowly quick bread and bread pudding it if it’s crap. Oh no I should not have judged because this is one of the best breads I’ve made to go with soup. I just love it. It’s kind of got a white bread/ french bread taste to it. A welcome difference to the no kneed or ciabatta that I’ve been doing. I like them all but for soup which I’ve been eating every day for lunch and at least once a week for dinner this is my fav.

Italian Feather Bread
(adapted from the Ricki’s Mozzarella Making Kit manual)
1 pack dry active yeast
1/2 TBS sugar
1/2 C warm water

Stir together and let sit while yeast proofs (bubble up)

1/6 C butter
3/8 C hot whey (or milk)
1 tsp salt
3 ish C flour

●Melt butter in hot milk
●Add to yeast mixture
●Add flour 1 cup at a time until comes away from sides of the bowl
●Knead until soft and smooth
●Let sit (it says 5-6 minutes but I left it for 15 minutes
●Shape dough by forming a 12X8 rectagle and fold/roll and pinch the dough up on it’s self lengthwise
●Butter and sprinkle cornmeal on a cookie sheet
●Place dough on sheet let double (I left mine for about 2 hours since I went to dinner but the directions say 50-60 minutes, but more times means more air which I like)
●Bake in preheated oven at 425F for 30-40 minutes.

Makes one good size loaf. Feel free to double the recipe as I halved the original. I’ve kept mine in the fridge for 5 days now and it’s still good.
Eat It.

*UPDATE* I do not recommend the cheese making kits by Zingermans (and I assume that most other kits would have the same problem) . Apparently even though the company knows that most commercial milk is pasteurized at too high a temperature to work with their kits they still market them to make people saying all you need is a gallon of milk and you can make cheese. But it’s not ANY normal gallon of milk. It’s a really hard (impossible for me) to find gallon of milk. I did a lot of researched called all the local dairy folk and couldn’t find any milk that would work. Makes me pretty annoyed since the response I got back from the cheese people was pretty much, yeah we know, we wish they wouldn’t use such high temps…umm lame.