Cheesy Bread

I am about to share with you a gem of a recipe!  It is incredibly easy to make and tastes absolutely wonderful.  The ingredients are bread, cheese, and butter.  Who could not like something made with bread, cheese, and butter???  However, it does lack a spectacular name.  I guess you could call it Cheesy Bites or something equally cutsie, but Cheesy Bread does the trick for me.  It's a lot of fun to serve at a football party or even a baby shower.  It's best hot but is even tasty room temperature.

Start with one loaf of frozen Rhodes bread dough (or whatever brand your supermarket carries).  You can take it straight from the freezer, set it on a greased plate, and cover with greased plastic wrap.  Let it sit there for many hours and you have a perfect, risen loaf of dough to work with.  Or you can take the shortcut method, which suits me much better.  Place your frozen loaf on a greased plate and pop it in the microwave for a minute.  Cover it and let it rise for only a couple hours instead of many hours.  For this recipe, the bread doesn't even have to be completely risen.  You can see how it looked when I started to prepare my bread.

Next, set up a little assembly line.  You will need 1/2 stick to 3/4 stick melted butter and 1C+ shredded Cheddar (or Cheddar Jack) cheese.

Tear off a small piece of dough, about the size of a cherry tomato.  Dip it into the butter and press the buttered part into the cheese.  The cheese will stick to the butter.  Wrap the dough around the cheese, keeping the majority of the cheese inside.  Tuck the edges on the bottom, which leaves you with a pretty nice, smooth top.  Place the dough balls into a greased baking dish.  If your dough was mostly risen, you can place the balls of dough right next to one another.  If the rising process wasn't complete, the dough balls can touch, but don't crowd them.  When you're finished, dump the remaining butter on top of the bread, spread it around, and top with the remaining cheese.

At this point, you can cover the bread and put it into the refrigerator for several hours.  If you will be baking soon, let it sit on the counter and continue rising.  I put mine straight into the oven and baked it.  (I was in quite a hurry.)  I normally make this recipe in an 8x8" (or 9x13" for 2 loaves) glass baking dish.  However, I was taking this to an event so I used a disposable pan.

Bake at 350 until it's done.  (The more the dough rises, the shorter the cooking time.)  You want to make sure the top is browned so it's not doughy inside.

Enjoy!  It's also served good with marinara sauce.