This soft, tender bread is baked with a topping of cheddar cheese, cream cheese and jalapenos, and it is perfect to serve with a pot of chili or a hearty soup or stew.
ingredients
For the filling
For the dough
directions
For the filling, beat the cream cheese with the butter and garlic in a mixing bowl by hand, until smooth. Stir in the chopped jalapenos, pickle juice and then stir in the cheddar and Parmesan. Set aside.
For the dough, stir the flour, yeast and salt together in a large mixing bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the hook attachment. Add the milk, egg and honey and mix on low speed (or using electric beaters with the hook attachments on low speed) just until the dough starts to come together. Add 1 cup of the cheese mixture and continue to mix on low speed until the dough become elastic and smooth, about 5 minutes. Place the dough into a clean bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise on the counter for about 90 minutes, until doubled in size.
Grease a 10 to 12-inch skillet or a 9-x-13-inch baking pan. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knock it down to deflate it and then shape it into a rope and cut into 12 equal pieces. Loosely shape the dough into balls (they do not have to look precisely round) and arrange these in the prepared pan. Dollop the cheese filling overtop the rolls (it doesn’t have to fully cover the rolls.) Cover the pan with a tea towel and let this rest for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF . Uncover the pan and bake the bread (place on a baking tray if using a skillet, in case some of the cheese spills over) and bake for 25 minutes, then reduce the oven to 325ºF and bake an additional 15 to 20 minutes, until the bread has turned a rich golden brown and all of the cheese has melted and is browning at the edges. Cool the bread for at least 20 minutes before serving in the pan, ready to pull the rolls apart from each other.