Pinterest, you are bad for my arteries. It was this photo thanks to Deseree Kazda of Life’s Ambrosia blog that sealed my fate for me. This recipe uses roasted garlic butter and brie to stuff the bread, but as Des pointed out, she also saw the Beantown Baker use butter and mushrooms and herbs, and Christy of the Girl Who Ate Everything blog used green onions and Monterey Jack cheese.
So it’s up to you what you want to stuff your bread with! I love all of Des’ and Christy’s recipes, which tend to be very comforting, so consider adding them to your RSS feed- they are on mine (I used to be on Google Reader but with the sad news of its impending demise recently am trying out Feedly).
Ingredients (serves 4):
- 1 large boule of some sort. The original recipe calls for sourdough, but I went with Pearl Bakery Italian country bread Paesano.
- 1 bulb garlic
- 1 tablespoon and then 7 tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
- pinch of salt
- a few grounds of freshly ground black pepper
- 8 ounces of brie cheese
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
- First, let’s roast the garlic in the skin. Cut 1/4 inch of the top of the bulb of garlic to expose all the cloves. Place the garlic with the cut side up in a piece of aluminum foil, and put one tablespoon of butter on top, right on those cloves, in such a way it will melt and get each clove. Yum already right? Alternately you can use olive oil for this instead of butter, but why have one little sliver of a tablespoon of butter left? Oh, I guess you could just use all olive oil as a substitute for butter in this recipe. Well, I didn’t.
- Sprinkle the lemon juice over the garlic and sprinkle with a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Twist the aluminum foil to close it to finish your little present, and roast the garlic for 1 hour. The cloves should be soft and golden and squishy. Set aside to cool.
- Slice the bread vertically and horizontally into squares, but do not cut all the way through as you want the bottom of the loaf to hold all these pieces together (sort of like one of those blooming onions of the 80s and 90s…). You will probably want to do the cuts in rows first, making each row about an inch or less apart, and then turn it and cut the other way. Place the bread on a sheet of foil that is large enough to later wrap the whole bread.
- Dice the brie- the size may vary depending on your bread and how you sliced it- you want each piece of brie to fit in between every cut of bread. It’s up to you whether you want to carefully trim off the white outer layer first- that skin is edible, but it does have a chewiness to it, so not everyone likes it. The people I was sharing this with I have noticed always leave the outer layer behind (I eat it all) so I did trim it off for this recipe. Dip your knife in hot water so the cheese doesn’t stick to it.
- Set the oven to 350 degrees F and using a teaspoon, scoop out the soft garlic cloves. Melt the 7 tablespoons of butter in a small pan with the garlic. If you want to add any herbs, you can do so now. Combine well with a quick stir in that pan
- Pour this garlic butter YES ALL OVER all the bread, making sure the bread gets down into the doughy inside spaces you cut access to. I used a silicon pastry brush I have to actually spread the liquid gold garlic butter in all the crevices. Seriously, I can just eat this now, but let’s finish this with the cheese like the recipe intends…
- Press the brie in between each cut. Wrap up the bread and bake for 15 minutes. Then uncover and bake for 10 more minutes- the cheese should get bubbly!
Finally, we can eat this! If you’d like, you can drizzle a little balsamic vinegar on top, or serve it as a dip on the side for the bread. You want to let it cool down for about 10 minutes before you serve so the cheese can get oozy and calm down from the bubbling and your guests don’t burn their fingers and tongues.
