Monday, November 8, 2010

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!! Pin It

19 comments:

  1. I just loved this bread. It's just too godd :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wat a gorgeous looking bread, beautiful slices..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looks gorgeous gorgeous Champa!! And Nutella smeared on it makes it even more so..What can be a substitute for cream cheese here?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks all for the comments.
    Suma,
    You could substitute with paneer but I do have another bread using ricotta or paneer. You could do half cup of butter with half cup of yogurt to get the same too. Let me know if you try it out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. love the spongy and soft bread...came out perfect!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. looks very soft and spongy..shld give it a try sometime!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love all kinds of bread. This looks perfect!

    ReplyDelete
  8. the bread looks better than the store bought ones Champa and I really mean it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Cream cheese bread is very creative. I might have made cheese cake, but I guess bread is a healthy option. Looks awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  10. U r tempting me now to make this wonderful bread.....trying to brush up my memory here, I have maida so should I reduce the quantity of moisture(cream cheese) or same proprortions will work...thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks everyone for taking time to leave a comment. I really appreciate it.

    Spice,
    Maida and all purpose flour are pretty much the same. You don't have to make any changes. After kneading, if you feel it is bit watery, add maida 1 TBSP at a time to get a smooth, elastic dough that is not sticky. This bread dough was so beautiful to just play with it. I wish I had brioche pans. I would've shaped them into brioche rolls.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thanks Champa, Now u tempted me into one more thing....another pan in my ever growing list of "to buy stuff"...lol....

    I'm off to kitchen.....to get the stuff out....will let u know...

    ReplyDelete
  13. one more ques. I'm gonna use kitchen aid....so any suggestion on how long to run the mach.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Champa, made the bread, it's good but got some more ques. for u....sending u an email.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hi Champa,
    Made this bread last night and tasted it this morning, it was just awesome. Thanks a bunch but I had to increase the water by another half cup otherwise my dough would not come together. I used 2 cups of APF and 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour, not sure if this was the reason but the final product was just too good and hence no complaints!! :)
    -Madhu

    ReplyDelete
  16. Madhu,
    Thanks for the feedback. Whole wheat flour takes more water than APF but also, how you measured the flour makes a big difference too. I usually knead the dough in bread machine so it takes less flour. By the time it has been kneaded, it won't need as much flour. I am really glad you liked it and I am even more pleased that you could figure it out to get the right consistency of the dough.

    ReplyDelete

If you have a question and you leave it as a comment, I'll surely answer the question to the best of my knowledge. Thanks for visiting.