A second attempt at getting this swiss bread into a smaller, more delicate form. Last time I tried a couple of different form factors and construction types. The taste was spot on, however they didn't look quite as elegant as I wanted.
This time I went for a different structure...I used loaf tins for all of them. I did 4 in small mini-loaf tins, and one in a 1lb tin. There was 150g of the dough/bacon mixture in each of the mini-loaves, and 400g in the 1lb tin. The dough was flattened out into a rectangle as wide as the tin, and pressed up with the heel of my hand, and then grated Comte cheese was placed over it (25g each for the small loaves, and 90g for the larger loaf). I then rolled them up, and placed them in the tin with the seam at the bottom. For a finish I brushed them with water and then brushed with flour
They baked up beautifully, and really happy with how they looked on the exterior. The big problem was the inside...the layers of cheese in the roulade created big air gaps...massive on the outermost layer on top. I actually made the mistake of slashing the larger loaf (not thinking about releasing the cheese...) and that didn't really help much. The flavour was still excellent, it's just I need to work out how to construct the loaf in miniature without leaving big air-gaps (I've had this issue with other bakes before, where a filling has created a large air bubble...it's most commonly where there is a large amount of moisture that converts to steam).
I'm not entirely sure how to resolve this. I think grating the cheese caused a distinct layer in the roll, and that allowed the top layer to expand away from the rest quickly, so I think I'm back to chopping it. Given the profile of the loaf will be (relatively) small I could do a single strip of cheese in the middle, and them wrap the dough around it...that way the cheese will heat last, and the bread should have already expanded and press into it, removing much of the gap. You'd end up with a small loaf with a cheese core. I could chop the cheese into small'ish cubes, and roll it, with occasional large chunks in there...this would stop the lamination effect, so long as the dough sticks to itself when I re-roll it (so need to be careful with flour and oil when I'm creating the dough layer. I'm thinking for this technique I may be better making the roll narrower than the tin, and then rolling the sausage out to length, which would compress the layers back down into each other...So, long story short, I'll be doing another batch. I'll use the mini-loaf tins, as the size is just what I'm looking for, however I'll do a variety of ways of adding the cheese into the loaf.