My mom’s cheddar swirl bread has been a staple in our home for as long as I can remember. She would bake loaf after loaf using a vintage Mirro dough bucket and a worn recipe card as her guide. That stained and faded card contained no instructions, and the ingredients were mere approximations — there’s not even an amount of flour listed! She let the dough tell her how much flour to add and how to time each rise, each of which changed based on chilliness or humidity of the kitchen.
A New Family and Recipe Are Born
In the mid-1970s, when my sisters were young, my mom used her training as a Home Economics teacher to develop her own sandwich bread, which eventually evolved into our beloved cheddar swirl bread. The ingredients she chose were both budget-friendly and ones that she could keep stocked in her pantry. Instead of fresh milk she used a combination of dried milk powder and warm water; instead of butter, she used oil.
When caring for small children, it is nearly impossible to focus on any task for longer than 30 minutes — but this bread recipe is made to fit into that sort of schedule. While my sisters played, she’d mix the dough, then take a break to clean up a block tower or find Barbie’s missing shoe. If ever she needed a longer break, she’d put the dough in the refrigerator, returning when nap time began or at the start of a new “Sesame Street” episode. Sometime in the intervening years, this simple white bread loaf began to include flecks of cheese and eventually morphed into the cheese-swirled beauty it is today.
By the time I arrived on the scene (the youngest of four daughters), Mom was ready to return to school — this time to get her degree in marriage and family therapy. Bi-weekly bread baking slowed to loaves made for special occasions.
