Green and Gouda

Last week my coworker was discussing her weekend during which she taught people the techniques of 18^th century cooking. She described a green onion bread that made my mouth water and left me intent on making a pot of soup to go with this onion bread. She was kind enough to send it to me, but I was missing two ingredients. Instead of giving up, I decided to create my own recipe by adapting a quick bread recipe.  I was surprised how small changes  lent themselves to making a delicious loaf of onion bread.

The first step was to select a basic quick bread recipe so I pulled a fruited quick bread from my files to use as the basis for ingredient proportions. My first change was to swap out the fruit for leeks which were in my freezer from a previous share box. Although I had previously sliced the leeks, I decided to chop them so the onion was finer and could be fully distributed throughout the bread.  Next I decided to use the remaining smoked gouda in the bread. Dicing this cheese required patience to achieve a dice no larger than one-eight inch. I had only a half coup of the cheese and I added a bit of the flour to the cheese in order to make certain the cheese spread throughout the bread. My final change was to cut the sugar in half, but how exciting of a change is that?

It is not a perfect recipe (too moist), there are some minor changes still to be made, but it is the first time I have successfully changed an existing recipe. So, for one wonderful weekend there was excitement, great flavors, and great aromas in my kitchen. The only task for me to accomplish is to identify the cheese I want  to use in the next loaf.