Jalapeno Cheese Bread

The last week or so have been crazy.  Everyone had a cold and R wasn’t sleeping well, or at all.  We attributed it to being stuffed up so that he was having a hard time breathing, but Friday we found his first tooth peaking through.  Either way it meant a very sleep deprived house.  It seems when things get difficult I start to think about doing something with my hands.  I miss my beads (its been a year).  I miss my crochet (it’s been a month).  I miss taking pictures (it’s been a few weeks).  I start day dreaming about how to combine my hobbies.  Make something unique out of it all.  Or I’ll dream about just being able to sit and finish a project.  I know this is what it is right now and mostly I’m good with that. 

Lately I’ve been in the mood to cook.  Fun dinners.  Simple veggies and fruits for R.  Mostly recently I’ve been thinking about baking bread.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE fresh bread.  Even simple white bread is so so so good when its warm out of the oven.  I’ve been doing a little research on breads, coming up with ideas.  There’s like a million different breads out there and some can get complicated.  What set me on track was Mom had given me a bag of home grown jalapeno peppers that I had no clue what to do with.  Until she gave me the idea of jalapeno cheese bread.  A couple of google searches and reading different recipes and this is the one I chose.

It’s been years since I’ve made bread with yeast.  Normally simple sweet breads are what I go with because they don’t take long to do.  But I found a yeast packet in the back of my cabinet with a best use by date of Oct 2006.  I emptied it into some water with sugar and although it was less than the required 1.5 tablespoons it still frothed so I used what I had.  I put in 5 peppers because home grown tends to be smaller.  And I used a combo of white cheddar and gruyere cut into small chunks.  It was a very sticky dough and I added what seemed like a lot extra flour to stiffen it up and it was still a very sticky dough.  I kneaded using my mixer with a bread hook, never done that before so I have no clue if you can over knead the dough.  It didn’t rise much, which could be from old yeast, or not using quite as much as was called for.  But despite all these worries while mixing and baking (two loaves became one in the oven)  it tastes wonderful.  You can’t beat home made bread.  YUM.  And if I think about it in an in the now way…I created something today.  And I finished something today.  And I’m reaping the rewards.  So now I’m more addicted than usual to the food network.  Looking for inspiration on dinners or holiday snacks.  They don’t really have any baking shows…maybe they’ll fill that hole soon.

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