John Torode's hot bacon and gruyere bread

Thursday 16 May at 7:52am

John says: This bread, this delicious bread, can be made the night before and baked first thing in the morning or you can make the day before and spray it with a little water and heat it up.

Hot bacon and gruyere bread

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

For the dough

7g sachet dried yeast

1 tablespoon milk

1 tsp. olive oil

350mls water (not cold please )

Sprinkle of sugar

500g strong white flour

10g salt

80g butter

300g thick cut bacon cooked with black pepper

200g gruyere roughly chopped

100g block mozzarella grated

2 handfuls fresh soft herbs such as basil, chives, sage or oregano and parsley

Method

For the bread

Mix the yeast with the milk, olive oil and a couple of teaspoons of the water and a sprinkle of sugar then leave somewhere warm for 10 minutes. It will start to bubble, the bubbles mean the yeast is working.
In a mixing bowl put the flour and the salt. Mix it well.
Mix the bubbling yeast mix, with the rest of the water and add to the flour
Start slow with the mixer, then speed it up, beat for a good 8-10 minutes. The mix is done when it is slapping the sides of the bowl, you will see/hear what I mean.
Add the butter and beat again, just for a minute. Here you have to be a little patient, leave to rise for 30 minutes, it will double in size.
Grease a round cake ring 28cm in diameter
Once the dough has risen, beat it again to knock out the air and take it from the mixer
Flour the bench and roll the dough into a log and foot long (30cm) and slice into 12
Roll each one into a ball and then flatten, stick a good amount of bacon and cheese in the middle and fold over
Lay them all really close to each other in the tin to make a pretty pattern and sprinkle over the rest of the bacon and the cheese
Drape over some oiled cling film and put the whole lot on the fridge over night
In the morning, preheat the oven to 200c , then turn the oven to 180c once it goes in
Brush the top with some milk, top with more cheese if you like and cook for about 25-30 minutes. Leave to cool a little before serving but not long, and whatever you do, don’t turn your back or it will all be gone!