Dorie Greenspan’s Goat Cheese-Black Pepper Quick Bread
With its hints of mint, goat cheese, and freshly ground black pepper, this quick bread is best paired with a glass of rosé.
Serves10
Makes1 (8-inch) loaf
Prep15 minutes
Cook34 minutes to 38 minutes
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No matter when I serve this easy nibble with its bits of goat cheese, a fair bit of mint, and more than a dash of freshly ground black pepper, I imagine myself outdoors, at a garden party or on a café terrace, with a glass of cold wine — it’s often rosé — and a bunch of good friends. Kind of like a muffin and kind of like a sponge cake, the loaf rises and browns beautifully and has a crumb with a little give.
A Word on the Cheese
Choose a soft goat cheese with a flavor you like. Because soft goat cheese is hard to wrangle into pieces — it’s sticky — give yourself the advantage by working with the cheese when it’s cold. (I cut the cheese when it’s cold and return the pieces to the fridge until I need them.) Size and neatness don’t matter here, so just slice away the rind (if there’s one), cut the cheese into bits (try to get them about a half inch or so on a side, if you can even get sides) and stir the bits into the dough as evenly as you can.
Goat Cheese-Black Pepper Quick Bread Recipe
With its hints of mint, goat cheese, and freshly ground black pepper, this quick bread is best paired with a glass of rosé.
Prep time 15 minutes
Cook time 34 minutes to 38 minutes
Makes 1 (8-inch) loaf
Serves 10
Nutritional Info
Ingredients
- 3
large eggs
- 1/3 cup
milk
Cooking spray or butter, for coating the pan
- 4 ounces
cold fresh goat cheese
- 5 sprigs
fresh mint
- 1 3/4 cups
all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon
baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon
kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon
freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
- 1
medium lemon
- 1/3 cup
extra-virgin olive oil, preferably fruity
- 1 tablespoon
honey
Instructions
Place 3 large eggs and 1/3 cup milk on the counter and let sit until room temperature.
Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 350ºF. Coat an 8- to 8 1/2-inch loaf pan with butter or cooking spray. Cut 4 ounces cold fresh goat cheese into rough 1/2-inch pieces. Strip the leaves from 5 fresh mint sprigs and coarsely chop (3 tablespoons).
Place 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper in a large bowl and whisk to combine.
Finely grate the zest of 1 medium lemon into a medium bowl. Add the eggs, milk, 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, and 1 tablespoon honey, and whisk to combine. Pour over the flour mixture and, using a flexible spatula, lightly stir the mixtures together and only a few streaks of flour remain; you don’t need to be thorough.
Add the cheese and mint and, using as few strokes as possible, mix until almost uniformly incorporated — it’s better to be fast than thorough here. You’ll have a heavy, sticky dough. Transfer the dough into the pan and use the spatula to poke it into the corners and to even the bumpy top.
Bake the loaf until it’s golden, tall, and crowned (perhaps cracked) and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 34 to 38 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and leave the loaf in the pan for 3 minutes, then unmold it onto the rack. Turn it right-side up and let cool to room temperature.
You can eat the loaf when it’s warm, but I think its texture is better when it’s allowed to cool. The loaf cuts beautifully if you use a serrated knife and don’t make the slices too thin. Slice the bread about 1/2-inch thick.
Recipe Notes
Storage: Wrapped well, the loaf will keep for about 2 days at room temperature or for up to 2 months in the freezer; defrost in its wrapper.
Excerpted from BAKING WITH DORIE: Sweet, Salty, & Simple © 2021 by Dorie Greenspan. Photography © 2021 by Mark Weinberg. Reproduced by permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.