Braided biltong loaf

A filled loaf with a braided seam

Brita du Plessis’s Woolworths TASTE recipe makes one yeasted loaf filled with sundried-tomato pesto, Cheddar, feta and finely chopped beef biltong. The dough is rolled around the filling, cut lengthwise into two strands and braided before its final rise. It is a modern published recipe, dated 4 July 2023, and the page credits Du Plessis for the recipe and Sadiqah Assur-Ismail for the photographs and video.

The braid exposes part of the filling and creates a striking loaf to slice and share. The dough’s rise provides the structure: gas produced by the active dry yeast expands the gluten network in the flour, while the filled shaping traps cheese, pesto and biltong between the strands. The loaf is therefore both a bread and a composed savoury bake, rather than a cured-meat recipe.

Ingredients, including a quantity to verify

For the dough, the published list gives 10 g active dry yeast, 4 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons salt, 3 cups flour, 1½ cups lukewarm water and 4 tablespoons milk. The filling is 250 ml sundried-tomato pesto, 120 g Cheddar, 80 g feta and 180 g finely chopped Woolworths beef biltong. The chilli-biltong butter uses 50 g softened butter, 10 g chilli flakes and 25 g biltong powder.

The 2 tablespoons of salt against 3 cups of flour is conspicuously high for a yeast dough. It is exactly what the published page prints, but the research source flags it for verification before republication. This record preserves the source quantity and does not invent a correction. If the publisher confirms an erratum, the record can be updated with that evidence; until then it is a published figure requiring caution, not an independently tested formulation.

The filling combines salty, crumbly cheeses with savoury dried meat, while the tomato pesto supplies a concentrated, oily and acidic component. The chilli-biltong butter is served alongside rather than worked into the loaf, so it adds a separate hot, fatty accompaniment.

Mix and prove the dough

The recipe starts by mixing the yeast with one tablespoon of the total listed sugar and some of the lukewarm water. It rests for five minutes or until bubbling. The source does not state an exact water temperature; lukewarm is its descriptive cue, so no numeric range is supplied here.

Mix the dry ingredients, then gradually pour in the wet ingredients while stirring with a wooden spoon. Once the dough comes together, knead it on a lightly floured surface for ten minutes. Move it to a lightly oiled bowl and prove for one hour. Kneading develops the elastic dough; proving allows the yeast to produce gas and the dough to expand. It lists one hour for this first rise but not the room temperature or a final dough volume.

Fill, split, braid and bake

After the first prove, knock down the dough and roll it into a rectangle. Spread on the sundried-tomato pesto, Cheddar, feta and finally the chopped biltong. Roll the rectangle into a cylinder, cut the roll lengthwise into two strands and braid or knot the strands together. Set the loaf into a tin and allow the second rise to continue until the dough has doubled. This visual endpoint is specified, but the time is not.

Bake at 180°C for 25–30 minutes. The recipe metadata separately lists 30 minutes cooking time; the method’s range is preserved. Its method is intentionally brief about tin dimensions, dough thickness and oven variation, so those details are not expanded into false precision. It says to serve the loaf with the chilli-biltong butter.

Serving and what this recipe does not establish

The loaf can be served as a shared savoury bake, with the butter offered alongside. Its combination of pesto, two cheeses and biltong is specific to this recipe. Changing the cheeses, adding a different sauce or using a different dough ratio might work as a kitchen adaptation, but those would no longer be Du Plessis’s measured formula.

The recipe uses finished biltong and says nothing about curing or drying it. It makes no shelf-life claim. Its only quantified preparation controls are the two dough rises as described, the kneading time and the oven temperature and bake range. The record retains the source’s unusually high salt amount for verification rather than creating an untested alternative.