The other week when I made my penne vodka recipe, I realized upon serving that the dish was screaming for a good slice of bread. Immediately, I thought a sun-dried tomato and Asiago cheese bread would be DELICIOUS with the penne vodka.

This bread is scary to make, I’m not going to lie. You are going to question yourself A LOT and OFTEN. Have faith. It will work out!

This is a wet dough, and when I first started working with wet doughs, I was very insecure. It didn’t seem right and I kept wanting to add more flour, which ultimately made it too dense and unenjoyable to eat. And I would get so frustrated trying to work with the dough and it constantly sticking to my hands.

So let me walk you through the process here. All bakers, and particularly bread makers, would agree that weighing your flour is a much safer approach than measuring it. You can get very cheap, yet well-rated, kitchen scales on Amazon. I think I paid $10 for my little scale. If you don’t have a scale, do not tightly pack the cups when measuring. Dip, scoop, shake to “even” straight, and place in your stand-mixer bowl.

Prepare your yeast mix and once frothy, add to the flour/salt mixture, using the bread hook attachment to slowly combine. You may need a rubber spatula to push down the sides to ensure all of the flour combines. Once combined, I turned my mixer up to about a 4 and let it slap the dough on the side of the bowl for about 5 minutes. This allowed me to skip the step of manually kneading the dough, and therefore not getting my hands all goopy!

You can see how this dough looks sticky, right? Don’t worry! This is what is going to give you a light, chewy bread!

Take a handful of flour and sprinkle over the top of the dough. Without try to mix the flour in, gently remove the dough from the bowl and flip so the flour is now on the bottom. Flour the top again with a handful of flour. Throw a towel over the bowl and let sit until doubled in size ~ about an hour.

If you want to follow to a T my process for making this, let the dough stay on the counter for about 4 to 6 hours. Then remove the towel and cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerat the dough for about 12 hours (overnight). The next morning, take the dough out of the refrigerator and let sit for about an hour. Prepare your working surface with a generous amount of flour. I know most recipes say “lightly flour,” but if you do that, your dough is going to stick to the counter, you’re going to get frustrated, you’re going to curse me to the gods, the dough will be thrown in the garbage with a big “screw that!” and you will never want to try one of my recipes again!

Too much? Okay, so generously flour your working surface! Using your hands, stretch the dough to be about 12 inches by 9 inches.

Now spread the sun-dried tomatoes evenly across this. The majority of the oil should have been drained from the tomatoes before placing them on the bread, but it’s okay if there is some residual oil!

Now cover this with the Asiago cheese!

The next few steps were when I started questioning myself… did I just spend all this time and this bread is going to be a FAIL? Is this too moist? Will this cook properly? Is this going to be any good???

Deep breath. Just trust that the handling of the dough going forward will not feel like handling a traditional dough. That’s okay.

So, cheese and tomatoes are on. Now fold the dough like a letter ~ into thirds…

Now do the same lengthwise. Pull a third toward you, flip the dough around and pull the last third toward you.

Flip the dough to be seam side down. Carefully work to pull the edges down and under, forming a ball. The sun-dried tomatoes may try to escape! Push them back in and pull and wrap another section of dough over it. They may not stay perfectly contained! That’s OKAY!

Using the same bowl you used to mix and ferment in, lightly dust the sides and bottoms with flour. Place the dough back in and dust with additional flour.

Cover with a towel and let sit for an hour to rise slightly. Around the 45 minute mark, place your Dutch oven in the oven, rack positioned in the middle. Now preheat your oven to 450°.

When ready, transfer the dough, seam side up, to a long piece of parchment paper. If sun-dried tomatoes are exposed, pinch dough over the top. It doesn’t have to be perfect!

Carefully pull the Dutch oven from the oven and place the dough (on the parchment paper) carefully inside. Cover with the lid and place in the oven. Cook for 30 minutes. Prepare your egg wash before the 30 minutes is up. When the 30 minutes is up, being careful not to burn yourself, remove the Dutch oven lid and generously coat the top of the bread with egg wash. Then sprinkle the remaining Asiago cheese on top. Return to the oven, without the lid, for 15 minutes. It should now have a nice golden top! Carefully remove from the Dutch oven and allow to cool!

Look at those layers! We couldn’t resisted and had to cut ourselves a slice right away! All my worries drained away with a big sigh of relief. This was fantastic!

Enjoy!