Fluffy Garlic Bread With Ham and Cottage Cheese Filling

Super soft, fluffy and buttery garlic breads filled with a variety of savoury fillings made from scratch. The breads have a bit of a golden crust but are soft and fluffy inside yet chewy throughout.

This is a versatile and simple dough. The scent of dough rising in a warm oven just permeates the house, and makes it feel cozy and warm. If you have never baked bread this a good one to start with.

This dough freezes well too! So if you are expecting guests you can make the dough ahead and serve freshly baked bread. Freezing options are given below.

Bake a batch of these breads. You will LOVE them!

Ingredients

For the dough:

3- 3 1/2 cups Bread flour or All purpose flour

1 cup + 2 Tbs warm water

1 1/2 tsp instant yeast

2 Tbs sugar

3 Tbs unsalted butter melted

1 1/2 tsp salt

For brushing:

2 Tbs unsalted butter softened

1 Tbs olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

3 cloves of garlic

1/4 tsp Italian seasoning

Filling options:

For cottage cheese filling

1 onion

1 small tomato

1/4 capscicum

1/4 tsp ginger garlic paste

200 grams Cottage Cheese or Paneer crumbled

1 tsp curry powder

Other filling options:

Ham

Mozzarella and Cheddar cheese blend

Jalepenos

Chorizo

Sausages

Sweet corn

Get your ingredients and your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and you are ready to go. You can make this dough by hand, just get ready to knead for about 10 minutes.

• In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine all ingredients for dough except flour.
• On low speed, gradually add flour till the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. Increase speed to medium and knead dough for 7 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

Your dough is ready when it is tacky when touched but not sticky. It should stick slightly to your finger but pull away when you move your finger further away. Also, if you make an indentation in the dough, it should bounce back.

Remove dough to a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a dry towel. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours.

Divide dough into 4 portions. At this stage we can freeze the dough if we want to use it later. I plastic wrap the dough balls and store them in a freezer safe container or in a resealable plastic freezer bag and freeze. When ready to bake, bring out the dough a couple of hours before and leave it on the counter to thaw. Follow the rest of the instructions for shaping.

In a small bowl add the chopped garlic and olive oil. Microwave for 10 secs. Into the same bowl, mix butter, Italian seasoning and salt. Garlic butter is ready.

Add oil to a pan. Add onion. Then ginger garlic paste and saute well. Add tomato and saute till oil clears. Add curry powder. Add salt. Add capscicum and crumbled cottage cheese and saute till the oil is clear. Your cottage cheese filling is ready.

Sprinkle lots of cornmeal on a flat surface (for outer crunchy coating). Roll the dough into a circle. Spread the prepared garlic butter over the dough generously. You can add the filling on one half of the bread and then fold the other half over it. Here I have added Mozzarella and Cheddar cheese blend, ham and Jalapenos in one. In the other I used the cottage chesse filling prepared earlier. Fold the dough into a semicircle and seal the edges properly, else the cheese will ooze out. We wanna keep all the goodness inside!! Then brush a generous amount of prepared garlic butter on top. Use a sharp knife and lightly mark straight lines along the bread for cutting after baking. Do not cut it all the way through before baking. Cover and allow to proof on the bench for 30 minutes further.

Preheat oven to 360 degrees F. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Brush with garlic butter as soon as the bread is out of the oven and serve. Your house will smelly heavenly!!