Seriously, this is the best savory bread I've ever made. Ever.
This is the best party food IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
This would have been dinner Saturday night had we not already put the steaks on the grill and made the mashed potatoes and vegetables. As it was, Dwight, myself and our dinner guests had to exercise every bit of restraint we had to stop eating this bread so we could eat the rest of dinner. But I think we all would have been happy as clams had I only made this.
This is what I'm now calling my Electric Chair meal. If I were going to the electric chair, this would be what I'd ask for. This and a bottle of wine. Seriously.
I mean... just LOOK at this bread:
It's bread dough, enriched with butter and an egg, seasoned with oregano (God, how I love oregano) and basil (ditto). Bake that up and I'd be a happy camper. BUT WAIT. There's more.
Take 8 ounces of bacon, dice it, fry it and save the grease. Oh, yeah.
Take a bunch of green onions and chopp em all up.
Take half a dozen oil packed sun-dried tomatoes and chop THEM up.
Mix all of those together. And you start to realize that this really might be the best thing ever.
After proofing the dough, you divide it up and to form little rolls— BUT you wrap the dough around *sniff* fresh mozzarella. I know.
BUT WAIT.
After you roll up the cheese-stuffed ball, you roll it in — hold on — the reserved bacon grease and melted butter. I KNOW!
BUT WAIT.
THEN you roll the bacon butter coated roll in parmesan cheese and more herbs. Put them in a bunt pan and layer with the bacon mixture until you've rolled up the last, beautiful roll. Proof, bake, eat and die a happy, happy person. My rolls didn't really hold together as rolls, probably because we ate it about 5 seconds after it came out of the oven. We totally didn't care. We grabbed a couple of forks and dug in. It wasn't pretty:
Head over to the Choosy Beggars site for the full recipe and lots of great step-by-step photos. It's where I got the original recipe. The only changes I made are:
- I used almost 16 oz of fresh mozzarella, twice what's listed in the recipe. Hells yeah. (The recipe calls for bocconcini but my store didn't have them.)
- I didn't get scientific with dividing the dough and getting a certain number of pieces. I just snipped pieces and rolled them up. This is also why I ended up using so much cheese.
- I didn't use olives. I don't like them. Sorry.
- I ended up using about 4 cups of flour instead of 3-1/2. The dough was way too wet. Use your judgment.
