As a participant of #Strong Girl Summer 🏋️♀️, I'm officially on the lookout for ways to get in some extra protein.
So when I stumbled upon a TikTok recipe for a five-ingredient cottage cheese bread, I was veryyy excited.
"You won't find this bread in any store," user @carolinagelen said in her TikTok. "My 5-ingredient cottage cheese bread is so easy to make. It's fluffy, tender and high-protein."
Immediately, I knew I had to try it, because what could be better than a nutritious, easy-to-make loaf of bread?
So without further ado, here's how my attempt at the recipe all went:
For reference, I used Carolina's recipe posted on her Substack. Also, a disclaimer: this was my first time making bread!
First things first, I gathered all of my ingredients, which included bread flour, cottage cheese, egg whites, active dry yeast, and kosher salt.
Then, in a large bowl, I combined 11/2 teaspoons of dry active yeast and 1/3 cup of water and set that to the side.
Then, in a blender, I blended 1 cup of egg whites and 1 cup of cottage cheese until it was all nice and mixed.
After about 30 seconds of blending, it looked like this:
After the blending was done, I poured the cheese mixture into the yeast, and whisked that all together.
Next, I added 4 2/3 cups of flour and used a fork to mix it all together into a sticky dough.
Once the dough was combined, I kneaded it for about five minutes and shaped it into a ball. From there, I covered it with some saran wrap to prep the bread for proofing.
In case you're unfamiliar with "proofing" bread, it's when you cover the dough and let it sit in a warm spot so the fermentation process can begin, and the dough can rise.
However, I didn't really have any warm spots in my apartment that would be suitable for proofing. But don't worry, I learned about a simple way to proof bread in the oven while it's turned off. Once you have your covered dough bowl, you can put it on the top rack of the oven, and then place some boiling water underneath. The steam will surround the dough with warmth and moisture, which is ideal for the fermentation process.
After about an hour of letting the dough proof, I took it out of the oven. And look, it rose a decent amount!
Since I only had standard 9x5 inch loaf pans, I figured the newly risen dough would be too big to fit into just one pan, so I decided I'd make two smaller loaves.
To form the loaf, I flattened out one dough ball and rolled it into a log.
I pinched the ends of the log to "seal" the loaf closed, and I repeated this entire process for the other ball of dough.
Once I had my two loaves ready to go, I put them in their respective pans, and let them proof in the oven for another 20 minutes.
After letting the loaves proof again, they were looking nice and plump. As a final step, I cut slits in the middle of each one before plopping them into the oven.
Finally, I baked the loaves at 400° for about 40 minutes.
And voilà! They turned out better than I ever could have imagined.
For my first time making bread, I think they turned out so well.
Finally, it was time to try a slice, so I toasted up a piece and spread some peanut butter and honey on it. After the first bite, I was extremely impressed with the bread's firm yet fluffy texture. Honestly, there were no complaints from me!
And no, I didn't taste any cottage cheese. If someone had given this to me without telling me its ingredients, I would've 100% thought that I was eating normal bread.
