Federal Reserve officials thought inflation was still receding, though that process was expected to be "somewhat uneven," according to minutes released on Wednesday from the Fed's policy meeting last month.

Why it matters: That characterization came before new data that showed yet another month of hotter-than-expected inflation — a sign that faster price increases in key parts of the economy will take longer than anticipated.

What they're saying: Nearly all Fed officials thought it would be "appropriate to move policy to a less restrictive stance at some point this year if the economy evolved broadly as they expected," according to the minutes from the March 19-20 policy meeting.

"In support of this view, they noticed that the disinflation process was continuing along a path that was generally expected to be somewhat uneven," the minutes show, signaling that Fed officials did not see progress on inflation stalling out at that point.

A few officials said that the hotter inflation readings were due to seasonality quirks, but some others said the inflation jump was "relatively broad based and therefore should not be discounted as merely statistical aberrations."