Dill and cottage cheese bread

A lovely home-made bread with red onion and soft cottage cheese that give it an incredible moistness and texture, dill leaves and seeds to infuse it with flavor and a lovely crispy and flavorful crust. It's also made partially with wholemeal wheat flour, so you could label it as healthy as well :).
Recipe slightly adapted from the lovely Smitten Kitchen. 


Last year: Fondant pan potatoes (French style).
Two years ago: Pricomigdale (Romanian walnut biscuits), Salata z Boczkiem (Polish wilted lettuce salad with bacon vinaigrette) and Smoked salmon and cucumber starters.



Ingredients (for one small loaf):

• 15 g fresh yeast or 7 g dry yeast
• 125 ml water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 375 g flour (we used 275 g all-purpose flour and 100 g whole wheat flour)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large red onion
• 2 packs of fresh dill (30 g total weight)
• 1 tablespoon dill seeds (optional)
• 200 g cottage cheese (large-curd)
• 1 egg
• a little olive oil for brushing the dough

For the topping (optional):

• 1 egg or 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon dill seeds or 1 teaspoon coarse salt

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Mix the water, sugar and yeast in a small glass. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
Mix the flours and salt in a bowl. Peel and finely chop the onion and add it to the flour:

Add the yeast water and mix well. Also add the dill leaves and seeds, the lightly beaten egg and the cottage cheese:

Mix some more until you have an even dough.

Let it sit for an hour at room temperature, slightly covered, for one hour, or until doubled in size:

Gently press it down and work it some more. Transfer it to a small (500 g capacity) loaf tin (make sure you put some baking paper on the bottom of the tin for an easy removal later).

Let it rest and rise for another hour. Brush it with egg or with butter, and sprinkle it with more dill seeds or with salt. (We, as well as Deb @ the smitten kitchen, recommend the butter and salt combination).
After that, put it in the preheated oven:

Bake it for 35-40 minutes or until it looks nicely golden - browned. Take it out, allow to cool and bit and ease it out of the tin. Slice and dig in! :)

(It's wonderful warm, simply slathered with butter and salt!) :)