If you suffer from high cholesterol, I suggest you step away from the screen.
There is nothing healthy about this pull apart bread. Quite the opposite actually. It includes all the ingredients required for a heart attack.
But oh boy, is it deliciously finger-licking good.
I really, really, really love bread. Not plain bread, but flavored bread, bread with bits of things in it, sweet breads or bread lightly toasted and slathered in butter.
So as soon as I saw this, I bookmarked it and put it on Pinterest straightaway. I knew I had to make it. Like, soon.
I used some leftover dough from homemade pizza for this, so mine is not as big as the original recipe’s. You can make some fresh bread or pizza dough, let it rise and use it straightaway, or you can refrigerate the dough and then make this when you’re ready.
Its really fantastic. I think I’ll be making this every time there’s pizza for dinner. Each small, pull-apart piece of dough is coated in oozy, stringy cheese, crispy, crunchy, salty bacon and tasty, soft spring onion.
Um.. YUM!
My puppy loved it too. She lay next to me as I photographed it, her nose working hard as she sniffed out all the delicious smells. I just had to give her a little.
BACON CHEDDAR PULL-APART BREAD
Adapted from Tasty Kitchen.
You can double this recipe and make two flat breads the size of mine, or one larger, thicker pull-apart bread. And if you don’t have a cast iron frying pan, fry your bacon in a normal pan and bake the bread in a crock pot.
Also, you can mix up the flavours. This is just as good with torn up salami and mozzarella as it is with bacon and cheddar, so feel free to play around and use whatever you have in your fridge.
250g bread or pizza dough (1/2 a pound)
3 rashers of fatty, streaky bacon
3/4 cup cheddar cheese, grated plus 1/4 cup extra cheese, for sprinkling
2 spears of spring onion (shallots), finely chopped
40g butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
In a cast iron frying pan (skillet), fry the bacon on a low heat, so that the fat renders off and the bacon gets really brown and crispy. Put the bacon on a few pieces of kitchen paper to drain. Once it cools, break it up into small pieces. Don’t drain the fat from the frying pan (yet!).
Cut the dough into about 20 small pieces. Put it into a large bowl and pour the melted butter over the top. Also pour in any excess bacon fat from the frying pan.
Add the bacon pieces, 3/4 cup of grated cheddar and the chopped spring onion to the dough and butter mixture. Mix everything together well.
Spoon the mixture back into the fatty cast iron frying pan in an even layer. Sprinkle the extra cheddar over the top.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the top is golden. Serves 2 (or 1, generously, plus a puppy).
