Cream Cheese Sweet Bread

I am big time a planner. I buy stuff in advance and that leads to a situation like this to use it up before it goes bad. I bought cream cheese since I had a plan of making coconut cake with cream cheese frosting for my colleague. It never happened and that block of cream cheese was about to expire. What do you do with a block of cream cheese? Many things for that matter. I could've turned them into Cream cheese marbled chocolate cake or used it up on bagels or bread toast. But then again, there wouldn't be this post for me write. Right? I made a cream cheese bread instead. Let me tell you that this is an awesome bread. Very rich, tastes like milk bread and the crumb is so good that I probably will start buying cream cheese to make this bread often.

One Year back - Cranberry Pineapple Chutney
Ingredients:
Cream cheese - 8 Oz block at room temperature cut into 1" cubes
Sugar - 1/3 Cup
Warm Water - 1/2 Cup
All Purpose Flour - 3 Cups
Salt - 1 tsp
Instant yeast - 2 1/4 tsp
Milk - 1 TBSP for brushing before baking

Method:
To make the dough by hand: Mix the warm water, sugar, yeast. Let it froth for 5 - 10 minutes. Start mixing the cream cheese, salt and the flour to the yeast mixture and knead it for about 5 - 8 minutes. Coat with a bit of oil and cover and let rise till double about one hour. When the dough has doubled in volume, punch down and deflate and proceed with shaping the dough and baking as described below.

To make the dough in a bread machine: Place all the ingredients except milk in the bread machine pan in this order. Water, cream cheese, salt, sugar, flour and yeast. Set the machine on dough setting and start. When the cycle is complete, take the dough out, deflate it and shape into a loaf.

To Shape and Bake:
Grease a 9 X 5 pan with vegetable oil spray and place the shaped dough in it. Cover loosely with an oiled aluminum foil and let rise till double - about 1 - 1 1/2 hours. When the dough has doubled, preheat the oven to 375 F. Brush the loaf with milk. Bake for 20 minutes. Turn down the oven to 325 F and bake for another 20 minutes or till done. When done, the loaf will have beautiful golden brown and will sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. If the loaf is browning too fast, tent with aluminum foil. Let cool in pan for about 5 minutes. Remove to the wire rack to cool completely. Slice when completely cool.

Notes:
I used regular cream cheese but I think low fat cream cheese would work just fine.

This loaf is on its way to Susan's Yeastspotting.
Counting calories.. (I could easily get 18 not too thick slices from this loaf)

Enjoy!!