A great snack, an appetizer for your guests, a supper bread, and a delicious sandwich bread. For a little extra kick, use some chile infused oil for a dipping sauce.
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To the activated yeast, add ½ cup whole wheat flour and the chile paste. Combine using a spatula or dough hook on your mixer.
Roasted Garlic – If you don’t have any roasted garlic, then just roast up a few cloves on the stovetop. It’s quick and easy. Also, if you don’t have any chile infused oil, you could use the garlic infused oil from the stovetop roasting process for the oil in the recipe.
Chile Powders – To achieve a real depth of flavor, I encourage you to use chile powders from three different types of chiles with different heat level. Read types of chile powders for other powders that you could use. Just be careful with the heat levels. Use only 1/2 teaspoon of a HOT chile powder because this bread can be quite spicy and does get hotter overnight. As you can see from the recipe, I used a NM mild to medium chile powder for the primary flavor, followed by a hot, smokey pepper (chipotle) and a sweet paprika pepper.
Infused Oil – My three recommendation for the oil are Chile Infused Oil, Garlic Infused Oil, or Extra virgin olive oil. You could also used a combination of oil. For example, use the chile infused oil for the paste and then brush the top of the dough with the garlic infused oil or vice versa. A good quality extra virgin olive oil can also be used for either purpose.
The Cheese – Manchego cheese doesn’t melt and run like other cheeses; therefore, it holds together quite well and doesn't spread all over the bread during baking. However, if it isn't pressed deep enough into the dough, it does tend to “lift” as the bread rises in the oven and lays on top rather rests than inside the bread. This is more of an aesthetics issue than taste issue. If you use a different cheese it needs to be complementary to the red chile. This bread is very much about the flavor of the red chile powders; therefore, you want a cheese that complements that flavor without competing with it.
The Baking time and temperature – The oven I use is a small convection oven so this bread baked best at a little lower temperature (375º F vs. 400º F). I also found that 18 minutes was perfect. If your oven is larger than a regular microwave, I would suggest using a temperature of 400º F or increase the baking time to 20 minutes. (Keep in mind that I do live a mile high, so if you live at below that, you might could bake this at 350º F, but I can't say for sure.)
Recipe author: MJ of MJ's Kitchen