Blue Cheese and Cracked Black Pepper Bread

I married my husband Ace for a lot of reasons. One of which was his love of blue cheese. Yea, I know that sounds a little shallow. I can work around his complete dislike for all things seafood related and for most meat. I could not have overlooked a complete lack of respect for the big cheese. I can frequently be found adding some giant chunks of blue cheese to my bread. Here's how it looks.
I found this blue cheese chunk on sale. It did a flying leap into my cart. Oh speaking of stinky cheese. We used to call my oldest son (AKA Little Man here on the blog) The Stinky Cheese Man. He used to clench his fists so hard as a baby that if we pried them open they would smell like blue cheese. Yes we would bathe him. Yikes. Can I admit I liked to leave that cheese in there just for the smell? I'm kidding. Don't write me and tell me how horrible I am as a mother. I know there are folks out there with stinky cheese babies right now.

I used the 5 day bread dough , made with white wheat flour. Now I have some suggestions if you have a lapse in your sanity and don't want to use blue cheese. No comment. Actually, you can add in any number of things to your dough to make it a flavored loaf. Some of my favorites include caramelized onions, roasted garlic, dill, shallots, minced herbs, and pumpkin seeds. Use them all or a variety of different flavors. You could make the dough into a sweet bread simply by adding in chopped dried fruit and spices. The 5 day bread dough offers that "blank canvas" to which you can add anything you want. I love it. Roll out the dough into a circle, about 2 inches thick. This was 1/5th of the 5 day dough.

For the blue cheese and cracked black pepper, it looked like this. I used 3 oz of blue cheese and about 1T cracked pepper. I think it would have been even better with some roasted garlic chunks. Be still my heart.

Knead the cheese into the dough and form it into a loaf.

I rolled mine in a generous layer of cornmeal. Why do I love that crunchy coating on my bread? Maybe my brain has a shell on it. (Okay that was a movie quote. Ace liked Chris Farley).

Allow the loaf to rise one to one and a half hours depending on how warm your house is. Bake at 350 degrees 40-45 minutes, until a meat thermometer registers 170 degrees when inserted into the loaf.

Try not to have a family feud. Ace always eats the top crust off, often before I slice the loaf. Yes, he IS the Stinky Cheese Man.