Dilly Bread

The timing had to be right

I had no memory of Dilly Bread. Oh sure, I'd heard of it before. A prize winner in the 1960 Pillsbury Bakeoff, it had been around for a while. But I didn't remember eating it or ever seeing Grandma make it. Clearly, she did, though. The stains on the recipe card were the evidence.    

I was curious to try it, but the conditions for eating a savory bread that contained dill and dried onion had to be right. Then came a Sunday dinner with a saucy pasta dish as the main attraction, and Dilly Bread seemed the perfect accompaniment for sopping up all that sauce. 

Or so I hoped. 

How to make Dilly Bread 

The first step was to soften the yeast in warm water. Granulated yeast has made this step not as necessary as it was in 1960, but I did it anyway.  

Next, I was told to warm the cottage cheese until lukewarm. I put the cottage cheese in a bowl and heated it in the microwave in 30-second bursts. I wasn't sure how I would know it had reached the correct temperature. Then Alexa told me that lukewarm was between 110 and 120 degrees, so I got out my thermometer and used that instead of sticking in a finger.  

The next instructions were to "whip the (cottage) cheese until smooth." I didn't know what that meant, but I imagined the task would be similar to whipping cream. I got out my beaters and beat the cottage cheese at a high speed for a couple of minutes, but it looked the same as it had before I started. 

I almost turned to some of the other tools in my kitchen, such as my immersion blender or my mini food processor, but Grandma didn't have any of those things, and neither had the person who created the recipe. This was where I resorted to searching for the original. It didn't say anything about whipping the cheese, so I left it as it was. 

I stirred in the baking soda--a strange ingredient for a yeast bread--and then added the rest of the ingredients except for the flour. By the way, the two tablespoons of dried onion Grandma had in her recipe was a lot more than the 2-3 teaspoons called for in the original. I cut the dried onion back to 1 tablespoon, figuring if it wasn't enough, I could add more the next time.  If there was a next time.

Next, I stirred in the flour using my Danish whisk (not an affiliate link). 

One of the nice things about this bread was that it didn't require kneading. I just stirred it well then mounded the dough into a loaf shape and let it rise for an hour. 

I ran into trouble with Grandma's recipe in the next step, which says to "stir down, make into a loaf, let rise again. Bake at 350 degrees." Bake in what? Once again, I returned to the original recipe, which said to use a 1 1/2 or 2-quart casserole. That was slightly more helpful. After more googling, I discovered that a 1 1/2 quart casserole equals an 8 x 8-inch baking dish. A 2-quart is 9 x 9 inches. The pictured loaf with the original recipe was round and tall, but I had no round 1 1/2 quart dish, so I went with my 9 x 9. Here it is risen again and ready to go into the oven. 

Grandma's recipe said to bake the bread for 45 minutes. However, when it came out, the cottage cheese curds looked overdone.  

I was concerned. However, I cut a slice and added a some butter to the warm bread. 

The Verdict

My hope that this bread would be a nice complement to our lasanga roll-ups was not in vain. It soaked up the sauce perfectly and added a subtle layer of flavor.  It was crusty on top, light and fluffy in the middle, and nobody complained about the burnt bits. Next time, I'll buzz my cottage cheese in my mini food processor and see if that helps. I might also cover the bread with foil the last five minutes or so, something the original recipe suggested if the bread was getting too brown. That I'm already thinking about next time should be a clue that this bread is worth making again. My family raised their thumbs high for this one, and, more importantly, they devoured every last slice.

Yes, Dilly Bread has been around for a while. If you've forgotten about it or have never had it before, now might be a good time to give it a try.