Friday, March 4, 2011

Cheese & Chive Bread for French Fridays with Dorie

I love a good savory quick bread. It's the perfect solution for those times when you must have bread, only you forgot or didn't have time to get started early enough to make a yeasted loaf.  So I was happy to see this cheese and chive bread on the list for this week's French Fridays with Dorie.

Breadhead that I am, however, when I read the recipe I had a feeling that the ingredients were going to need a bit of a boost. In my experience, savory breads like this tend to suck up flavor like a sponge, and so they need a little extra help. Now, I can't say for sure that the bread would have been on the bland side as written, but I can tell you that mine came out quite nicely.

I tripled the cheese, and used a combination of shredded and cubed Gruyere, Comte, and Emmenthal, doubled the chives and toasted walnuts, and used a heaping tsp of both salt and white pepper. All this weighed the loaf down a bit, but it was worth it. The results were anything but bland, and it made the perfect accompaniment to some of my homemade rosemary and garlic tomato soup.

More importantly ... it's pretty!

I am seriously trying to figure out if it's at all possible to cook  an entire year's worth of blog posts at once so that I can photograph them at around 3 pm in the early spring light.  I want to bottle this light.

You know the drill: If you'd like to join in on all the fun, just pick up a copy of Around My French Table and start cooking along, and check out what everyone else thought about this recipe here. Happy French Friday!





36 comments:

  1. Your tripled the cheese?! Hooray for you...I bet every morsel was fabulous~

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree, you have gorgeous looking bread. You have indeed found your light and a great recipe!

    ReplyDelete
  3. cheese chives and walnuts what an amazing combo!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lovely photos! You got a great rise on your bread.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I made this bread almost exactly as written, and I couldn't taste the cheese as much as I would have liked. So that's common with quick breads, huh? Great idea to triple that cheese!

    ReplyDelete
  6. How DARE you call Dorie's bread 'bland'! No, I"m with you. It needed more salt for sure. I'm jealous of your light.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Trixie Girl, Beautiful bread! I made the choice to up the salt a bit with olives in my loaf in lieu of the cheese--we loved, loved it! Had it with soup, too--minestrone--so good!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gorgeous photos!!! I wish I had added more of everything to boost the flavor here. Maybe I will try it again!

    Oh yeah - that light is extraordinary.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Beautiful photos Trix. I wanted to thank you for inspiring me to do the French Fridays, I just posted my first one and it was kind of cool, anyway thanks again;-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. this looks absolutely gorgeous! thank you for sharing this.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I so know what you mean about bottling the light. Vancouver has been getting such erratic weather that it's impossible to plan when I can take a descent picture. Your photos are beautiful however!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Beautiful savory quick bread, yet to try a savory quick bread, look like i can start now.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Lovely! I bet it was amazing with that much cheese inside! :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow! That looks spongy good. Great post.

    We invite you to share this post and some of your favorite food posts on Food Frenzy.
    Please check out our community at http://blogstew.net/foodfrenzy

    ReplyDelete
  15. Pretty savory loaf, Trix! I've noticed this on a few blogs, and the outside is very pretty-almost like a golden crust. I bet it was so nice with your tomato rosemary soup. Yum Yum;-)
    Have a relaxing weekend, My Trix...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Tripling the cheese and doubling some of the other ingredients - sounds decadent and delicious!

    I'm with Allison on the light in Vancouver lately, we've been having almost every sort of weather in the space of an hour. Though, I tend to bake and cook in the evenings, so I'm the architect of my own destruction when it comes to badly lit photos.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I can just imagine that cheese savory flavor and then with a little whipped butter hmmmmmm hmmmm good! Looks so good...actually looks light too! Bet this would be great served with a bowl of tomato basil soup!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Beautiful bread - I know I used way more cheese than the recipe called for (which is probably why I liked it so much!) Lovely pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Love the extra cheesiness and the pairing with soups. This was one great week for FFwD!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Tripling the cheese! And I thought using cream for the milk was decadent. I love your potholders. Did you knit them? If you did, can I have the pattern?

    ReplyDelete
  21. In all honesty, I could not wait to see how you tweaked Dorie's recipe for this bread! Even though I am not part of the FFWD, I still follow a bunch of you just to see what you all have done... and I always look forward to yours because I know that you always add a little bit of "Trix" to your adaptation of Dorie's recipe...and I like that.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Very wise - so impressed that you knew to triple the cheese.Your photos turned out lovely - great lighting. Nana and I were delighted at how easy the recipe was this week. A welcome relief :)

    ReplyDelete
  23. So funny. I saw this recipe last weekend and thought I might boost the flavour with some BACON ;-) A friend is coming over for a visit tomorrow so I might ask her to help me out with this. Am just about able to sit up for an hour or so now after a week in bed. Am desperate to get back in the kitchen but so so dizzy still so my friend can be my sous chef!
    Re: the light, last month for FFWD, I made every recipe on a Sat morning and took all the photos between 3 and 4pm that afternoon. LOL. The things we do!

    ReplyDelete
  24. This is quite a pretty loaf of bread! It looks scone-like and delicate from the exterior, but the holes remind me quite a bit of pugliese bread.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I agree, this was a truly photogenic bread:) I also boosted the flavors by adding ham and scallions. The whole family loved it and I am not going to complain, even though I really wanted to make some grilled cheese sandwiches:(
    The light! I know the beauty of the afternoon light, which usually disappears by the time I come home from work:)

    ReplyDelete
  26. The bread looks terrific! I love the combination of chives and cheese in the loaf.

    ReplyDelete
  27. This savory bread sounds amazing, I love that you used Gruyere, Comte, and Emmenthal combo, wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  28. I am loving your photos. What camera do you use?

    ReplyDelete
  29. I prefer your recipe... triple cheese... my kind of bread

    ReplyDelete
  30. @Betsy: I don't think I could knit one or pearl two if you were holding a gun to my cat's head. Sorry! I got them at Ikea. : )
    @PeasePorridgepdx: Thank you! It's a Canon Digital Rebel XT. But I do think good light is key!

    ReplyDelete
  31. heck yes! more cheese wins! i have to have this bread soon!

    ReplyDelete
  32. I would do the jive for your cheesy chive!

    (see what I did there? I'm talking super cheesy talk!)

    ReplyDelete
  33. CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSE.

    Heaven.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Yeah! These stuffs are just amazing.For such Amazing Best WhatsApp Status just visit Best WhatsApp Status

    ReplyDelete