Quick Cheese Bread
An incredibly simple quick bread that only requires a bowl, spatula, and whisk, but results in a hearty, rich, amazing bread with a cheesy crust, and pockets of cheesy goodness throughout. This everything you would want from a loaf of bread, made simply.
Guys, I love baking bread, homemade rolls, breadsticks, heck, even cinnamon rolls, and have conquered working with yeast. But sometimes, you just want something that is utterly sinfully, cheesily delicious. And this bread is it. It is a quick bread, which means it doesn’t use yeast to rise, rather a different leavening agent, in this case–baking powder. Which means instead of a 4-5 hour process for a loaf of bread, you get this amazing loaf made in just 1.5 hours, 45 minutes of which is baking, and 15 minutes of which is cooling.
Equipment Needed:
This recipe is so simple you don’t need anything fancy at all. Not even a mixer. Here is what you do need.
- 2 mixing bowls, one for wet ingredients, one for dry.
- A whisk
- A rubber spatula
- An 8.5 inch by 4.5 inch loaf pan
Ingredients for Quick Cheese Bread & Why!
Cheese: This may be an obvious one, but what I love about this recipe is you really need a few different kind of cheeses. You need parmesan cheese. And you can shred it or grate it fine. And you need sharp cheddar. I prefer sharp cheddar and sharp white cheddar combined, as I think it give the best flavor. You will want to cube the cheddar cheeses, so you get lovely little pockets of cheese throughout the dough.
Milk and Sour Cream: You use whole milk, and sour cream to get a lovely creamy flavor and moisture in this quick bread. Trust me it is amazing. But you can swap out the sour cream for some plain greek style yogurt.
Melted Butter: This gives the bread richness. When it hits the cold milk, it will clump, which gives you pockets of rich buttery flavor throughout your bread.
Egg: The egg gives the bread structure and should not be skipped.
Baking Powder: Now you might think that 1 TABLESPOON is a lot, and it does seem like a generous amount, but it is not a typo. You need a good amount in order to give this fairly wet and heavy mixture lift in the oven. This is the leavener. It helps the bread rise, and is going to give it that lovely texture we want!
The Rest: Flour, which is the base of the bread recipe. I used an all-purpose flour, not a bread flour. Then salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper, which all offer flavor, and help the flavor of the cheese really shine. You can also add about a Tablespoon of yellow mustard to help the cheese flavor really shine if you want. But I opt to skip it most of the time because I am lazy.
How to Make Quick Bread
You make this bread like you do any other quick bread, like a banana bread or a zucchini bread, you simply mix the dry ingredients, then the wet ingredients, then fold them together, and fold in the cheese. But there are a few other steps, all super simple (full instructions in recipe card below):
- Prepare baking loaf pan, by spraying it with non-stick cooking spray.
- Add Cheese to the bottom. This gives your bread a super fun, tasty, salty crust. The parmesan cheese is the perfect exterior.
- Then do like normal:
- Whisk the dry ingredients together.
- Whisk the wet ingredients together.
- Fold the wet into the dry, and mix, but don’t over-mix.
- Fold the chunks of cheddar cheese in.
- Pour into your loaf pan. You may see some bits of flour that didn’t get mixed in, just use a spatula to mix them in real quick.
- Top with the rest of the parmesan cheese!
- Bake! Check for doneness by inserting a skewer into the center. And make sure it comes out clean.
- Cool. Now this is important, you want to let it cool in the loaf pan for 15 minutes when it is done, then let it cool for about 3 hours on a cooling rack.
While the bread cools the texture of the bread improves significantly, so while often when you make bread, like this honey whole wheat, you want to dig in as soon as you pull it out of the oven, this is one bread you want to allow to cool fully in order to get the best flavor and texture. Resist that urge to slice into it while it is still warm.
Tips and Tricks
If you have ever made a quick bread and have it fail, you probably committed one of the two deadly sins without even realizing it. So if you want this to turn out right, you have to follow the steps of mixing dry and wet separately, then combining them.
- Don’t Over-mix the Dough: This is the number 1 no-no with quick breads. Quick breads rely on the baking powder to help the dough rise. If you over mix the dough, the gluten in the flour will over-develop, and the baking powder will not be enough to make it rise. So if you do over-mix, you will end up with squat and tough bread.
- Don’t Under Cook: This recipe has a lot of moisture in it. You need that moisture, but if you undercook it, the bread will feel gummy or soggy. So to make sure you do not encounter this, make sure to check your bread for doneness before pulling it out of the oven. You do this by inserting a skewer into the thickest part, and make sure it comes out clean. The only trick is, there are pockets of cheese in this bread, so if it does come out messy, try inserting it into another spot to make sure it wasn’t in cheese.
Variations
One of my favorite parts of cooking is getting to make whatever adjustments I want. With baking, that can be a little trickier, but this delicious bread offers some room for playing around and adjusting the flavor profiles. Here are a few ways you can change things up with this cheese quick bread.
- Add bacon and onions: this bread makes a great base for many different savory bread combinations. Instead of cheddar cheese, use gruyere, then cook up 5-6 slices of bacon, and replace the butter with 3 Tablespoons bacon grease! Chop the bacon fine. Add onions sautéed in the bacon grease, and cook as normal. Yum!
- Add some fresh herbs: Mixing in a couple tablespoons of fresh dill, for example, is such a fun way to change the flavor profile.
Serve With:
- Chicken Tortellini Soup
- Baked Potato Soup
- Ham and Bean Soup
- Easy Broccoli Cheese Soup
- Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup
Quick Cheese Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup Parmesan Cheese shredded or grated fine.
- 2.5 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1/8 teaspoon Pepper
- 1/8 Cayenne Pepper
- 1 cup Whole Milk
- 1/2 cup Sour Cream
- 1/2 cup Sharp Cheddar Cheese chunks
- 1/2 cup White Cheddar Cheese chunks
- 3 Tablespoons Butter melted
- 1 Large Egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Making sure the oven rack is in the middle-position.
- Grease a loaf pan (8.5 inches x 4.5 inches), and sprinkle half the parmesan cheese (1/2 cup) into the bottom.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper, together. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, sour cream, melted butter, and egg.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and use a rubber spatula to fold the wet mixture into the dry/flour mixture, until just combined. The batter will be thick and heavy, do not over-mix.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and use the spatula to smooth the top.
- Sprinkle with the rest of the parmesan cheese evenly over the top.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the pan comes out clean. Check twice if needed, since you might hit a cheese pocket.
- Let the loaf cool for 15 minutes. Then remove from pan to a cooling rack, and let cool about 3 hours before serving.
Notes
**Use chunks of cheese, rather than shredded cheese to get those lovely little pockets of cheese throughout the bread.
***Let loaf cool completely before slicing, otherwise it might be gummy or soggy, with a bad texture.
Nutrition
Our recipe card software calculates these nutrition facts based on averages for the above ingredients, different brands, and quality of produce/meats may have different nutritional information, always calculate your own based on the specific products you use in order to achieve accurate macros for this recipe.
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Allyson Zea says
This was so easy and quick! Thank you!
Toni says
Thank you so much for the tips! Everyone will surely love it!
Lauren Kelly says
This is beyond simple to prepare and delicious! And you saved me because I can’t find yeast anywhere! Thank you!