cream cheese bread

Whenever Da and I do grocery shopping, I sometimes put into our shopping trolley food items that I may not necessarily have an immediate use for. These are often food items that, at the back of my mind, come in useful as ingredients in cakes, muffins, bread, cookies, etc. As such, if you were to have a look at our larder, you will find it stocked with chocolate chips, chocolate rice, cocoa powder, ground peanuts, icing sugar, etc.

I recently found some Philadelphia cream cheese in our refrigerator. I had bought it a few weeks ago as part of my "stock up the refrigerator / larder" exercise. As I was not in the mood to make a cheesecake, I decided to use the cream cheese to bake bread instead.

INGREDIENTS

320ml water
100g cream cheese (softened)
20g milk powder
30g castor sugar
1/2 tsp salt
50g butter
500g bread flour
2 1/2 tsp instant dry yeast

METHOD

1. Place all the ingredients (except the bread flour and the instant dry yeast) in the bucket of the breadmaker machine.

2. Add the bread flour, making sure that the wet ingredients are totally covered.

3. Add the instant dry yeast.

4. Place the bucket in the breadmaker machine, setting the cycle to "dough" cycle. Start the cycle.

5. When the cycle has been completed, turn the dough onto a floured board.

6. Using floured hands, knead the dough 5 times.

7. Spread out the dough in a 8" x 5" loaf pan that has been greased and lined with baking paper.

8. Cover the loaf pan with a damp cloth and leave for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

9. Bake in an oven preheated to 170 degrees for 30 minutes.

10. Let the bread cool thoroughly before slicing.