Georgian Cheese Bread (Khachapuri)
When I was a kid, the Thanksgiving bird had to come with green salad and gelatin salad, mashed potatoes, olives and cranberry relish. On top of that, there had to be New England succotash and Boston brown bread for Granddad. Grandma, a displaced Southerner, insisted on sweet potatoes and hot biscuits, and as a teetotaler she always brought Graham pudding, an alcohol-free sort of fruitcake.
But with the passing of the older generations, nearly all those traditions are gone. Both my brothers married Italian girls (well, one is half Irish), and a certain carefree experimentalism has entered the picture. This year I expect there’ll probably be cheese grits, scalloped potatoes and green bean casserole on the groaning board, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find ratatouille or risotto with porcini.
In this spirit I once made khachapuri , a big, showy bread with two pounds of Muenster cheese baked inside it. It’s a Georgian recipe from the 1969 Time-Life “Russian Cooking” book, making it about as far from Californian as you can get, but it was a big hit, doubtless because it’s so rich--there’s a whole stick of butter in the bread dough and even some in the cheese filling. (One tradition that has not disappeared is eating ourselves silly.) Bowing to popular demand, I’ve brought it to most Thanksgivings since.
I kind of miss succotash, though. Maybe I can make it just once, and then go back to khachapuri.
Dough
Sprinkle the yeast and 1/2 teaspoon of the sugar over 1/2 cup of the milk in a shallow bowl. Stir until the yeast is dissolved and place in a warm, draft-free spot until it doubles in volume, 5 to 8 minutes.
Place 3 1/2 cups of flour into the bowl of an electric mixer, make a well in the center and add the yeast mixture, salt, butter and the remaining 1/2 cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Mix on low speed until smooth. Gather the dough into a ball and place it on a lightly floured work surface.
The dough will be somewhat slippery. Knead at least 10 minutes, sprinkling from time to time with the remaining flour to keep it from sticking to the board.
When the dough is smooth and elastic, place it in a large, lightly buttered bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and set it in a warm, draft-free place to double in bulk, 45 minutes to an hour.
Punch down and let rise until it doubles again, 30 or 40 minutes.
Assembly
Cut the cheese in medium pieces and process in a food processor with the butter and egg until it balls up on the blade.
Punch down the dough on a lightly floured work surface; roll it into a 22-inch circle. Drape it over a 9-inch springform pan. Put the cheese in the middle and fold the excess dough from the sides up to the center of the cheese, pleating together at the top. Make the pleats as even as possible. Gather the ends of the dough together and twist into a knob on top of the filling. Let rest 10 or 15 minutes.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Bake the loaf until golden brown, about 60 to 70 minutes. Cover the bread with foil if the top starts to brown too much. Place the bread on a wire rack, remove the sides of the pan and let the loaf cool at least 30 minutes before serving.
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