catch up, fall behind, bake bread

I'm playing catch up in all aspects of my life right now. Work, house work (which I'm miserably failing at) blog, 10 year reunion planning... the list goes on.

I have no real excuse because we laid low last weekend, reaaaalll low. As in laid by the fire and only got up to refill sweet tea low. It was marvelous. We had our usual Saturday morning coffee date, actually had an impromptu breakfast with our neighbors Doc and Nan, then headed home. I had plans to work last Saturday but that fell through, so I resorted to baking bread instead. We've got our household back on our Dave Ramsey plans, especially since we bought a new home this year. So me being the tight wad that I am, has budgeted our grocery $$ pretty strictly. There's totally room to put more there, but I love to budget, love to coupon (within reason) and love to leave the grocery with change in my hand AS WELL AS everything I had on my list. 

This past week, french bread for our favorite soup (also a weekend tradition in our house) didn't make the cut. Actually, it didn't make the cart, I forgot it. Who needs nasty bakery bread anyway? I love to bake breads, I had the time... why not? The kneading and rising.. flouring and baking.. its very relaxing to me, not to mention the fact I feel super accomplished afterwards. I had yeast in the fridge ready to use for Ciabatta, but I decided to go with a quick bread. I  scoured through recipes that looked like I might have all the ingredients for, and am so glad I did. This bread was so simple to make and very fast. It made plenty for the soup without having half a loaf leftover to stale away. 

 Italian Cheese Quick Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon basil
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 3 tablespoons cold butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup  mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 9-inch round baking pan with cooking spray; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the first 10 ingredients and mix. Cut in very cold butter with a pastry blender until you get fine crumbs. 

In a small bowl, whisk together your egg, greek yogurt, and milk. Stir this into the dry ingredients until just moistened – do not over mix! My dough was a little dry so I had to add a few more splish splashes of milk, use your own judgement!

Spoon mixture into prepared baking pan, sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese and few diced up pats of butter on top, if desired (recommended!) Bake that bad boy for 20-25ish minutes or so, until you see the top get golden brown. We sliced ours up like a pie and dipped in our soup! 

This would be great with potato soup, chili, vegetable soup... but we eat ours with my addictive Gnocchi Soup. We make this nearly every weekend, all year long, so I'll be sharing that yummy recipe with you soon!

I've added a handy dandy print tab at the bottom of each post so that you can print any recipe you like, let me know how it goes!

Cheers!