Monday, February 2
This recipe was written for use in a bread machine, but I gave mine away a few years ago. Luckily, some of the other members of this group made this in advance and posted on the TWD site what they did, which helped a lot. Oh and get this.... at first one person made a post about how to make it without a bread machine and DORIE GREENSPAN HERSELF posted back her thoughts. Hello! How cool is that? (Yes, I really am a food dork, I know.)
This is one weird recipe. The dough is just weird - it contains the usual suspects, i.e. yeast, flour, salt, water, egg, yeah okay no surprises there, right? Keep reading though and you'll see nonfat dry milk, chili powder and refried beans! Yes, IN the dough. Interesting, huh? I think this makes this sort of bread VERY HEALTHY to eat because obviously it is now a source of protein, right?
Anyway, instead of using a bread machine I put everything into my mixer, mixed it together and let it rise until it was about double in volume, which took about 1 1/2 hours. Then it goes into a pan, which is supposed to be a 12-inch springform but I don't have one that big so I used a 10-inch cake pan. I trimmed off a little dough to make it fit the pan better since it was smaller and hoped for the best since it wasn't a springform. On top of the dough, you spread soft cream cheese. Then pour over some salsa (I used a peach cherry salsa that was a gift) and top with grated cheddar cheese. Let it rise some more as the oven heats to 475 and it's ready to bake. I used less salsa than was called for because the bakers that finished this in advance pretty unanimously determined that the requested amount was TOO much.
My verdict? Well, it is different. The clever girl liked it, which makes me think I should definitely make it again as dinnertime has become quite interesting with this child. But I am just not totally sold, I suppose. There was too much cream cheese though, and I even reduced the amount, using 10oz instead of 12. Maybe with different toppings in general... Not sure.
I can't wait to see what the other bakers thought! You can find this recipe here, but it differs from the book in these two areas: the book calls for 12 ounces cream cheese, not 8 (though I agree with the 8) and the book calls for 2 cups salsa, not 1 1/2 (though I used 1 cup and it seemed perfect). So really, the recipe on that link is probably about right! You can also find it in the book, Baking with Julia, on pages 440-441. Check out this link to see what the other bakers thought of this recipe!