These are always a big hit. Anyone who loves garlic bread and green chiles will love this.
I adapted this from Lauren’s Hasselback Garlic Cheesy Bread – the most pinned photo (and of course recipe) on Pinterest, ever! I added green chiles and cumin to the recipe. I also made her recipe without any change. Personally, I prefer my green chile version. That green chile flavor adds a lot and fits the recipe perfectly. Both are fabulous, though.
Want to know what “Hasselback” means? It refers to the specific style of the dish, namely cutting the bread into slices that stop right at the base, leaving all the slices attached at the bottom. It originally referred to potatoes where you take a whole potato and cut thin slices about 90% of the way through, like so:
Hasselback potatoes are named after the restaurant where they were first introduced in the 1940’s, Hasselbacken in Stockholm, Sweden.
Note that altitude affects yeast breads. They rise in about half the time here in Denver versus at sea level. At high altitude, you need to punch the dough down twice instead of once; and punch it down as soon as it doubles. You should reduce the amount of yeast a bit and may want to add a bit of water if the dough starts to dry out. The bread will still turn out really good if you don’t make adjustments, but it will flatten out a bit more and have a coarser texture with bigger holes. Some people particularly like it that way. Personally, I’m going to experiment with variations on this. No matter what, it turns out yummy.
- 1 cup Warm Water
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 1 envelope Active Dry Yeast (2¼ Teaspoons) (minus ½ tsp for high altitude)
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 3 cups Bread Flour
- Olive Oil, For Greasing Surfaces
- ⅓ pounds Sharp White Cheddar, or whatever cheese you prefer
- 1 cup diced mild green chiles
- ½ cup melted butter
- 2 cloves of garlic, pressed
- ¼ tsp ground cumin
- In a large bowl, stir water, honey and yeast together. Let yeast proof 5 minutes.
- Once you know yeast is active, stir in salt and the flour ¼ cup at a time. If using a stand mixer, use a maximum speed of 2 or ‘stir’. When the dough starts pulling away from the sides and the bowl seems to be fairly clean, set a timer for 5 minutes and walk away. Let the machine knead the dough. After 5 minutes, dough should be smooth and tacky but when touched shouldn’t leave any dough on your fingers.
- Grease the bowl and the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size. If at high altitude, it should take about a half hour to double.
- Punch down dough and cut in half. Form into two long baguettes the length of the cookie sheet. Twist or braid the dough if you wish. Cover with plastic wrap and rise 30 minutes. Start to preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place dough close to the oven where it’s nice and warm. Once oven is preheated, remove plastic wrap, from the dough reduce oven to 350F, put the bread into the oven and bake 20 minutes.
- In the meantime, slice the cheese into thin slices and melt the butter. Stir the pressed garlic and cumin into the butter.
- Pull loaves of bread out of the oven after 20 minutes and brush with the melted garlic butter. Bake another 5-7 minutes or until bread begins to turn a golden brown. Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes.
- Cut 1-inch slices ¾′s of the the way through the loaves. Brush garlic butter in between each slice and fill with a slice of cheese and about a tablespoon of chiles. I like to take 2 thin slices of cheese, sandwich green chiles between them, and then insert the cheese between two bread slices. Bake another 3-5 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
- Serve immediately.
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