Italian Party Bread - Meat & Cheese Stuffed Wreath - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with Italian party Brad that's right if you like bread and you like the party you are gonna absolutely love this party bread which is what I'm calling this meat cheese stuffed braided look since that's too long to be na+ I'm actually trying to create a new category of bread featuring this very simple and exciting technique and above and beyond all that to me this just looks like a party and if you don't think so I'm not sure I want to party with you I'm just kidding I'll party with anyone so with that let's go ahead and get started and to begin we're gonna need a 1 pound ball I'm ready to go pizza dough which you could make from scratch but if you're busy with other party preparations just buy some pre-made stuff from the store like I did and what we'll do is eat just enough flour so it doesn't stick has roll this out to somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick all right what is that 3/16 but anyway we're basically just gonna roll it out to the same thickness as we do for a thin crust pizza oh and one tip for when you roll in pizza dough because it tends to be very elastic what I like to do is roll it out a little bit and then stop and let it rest and relax for a couple minutes and then I'll continue rolling and I might even do that a couple times if it keeps stretching back so don't be afraid to let your dough relax if it won't stay rolled out oh and one more thing to make this step where we roll up our meat and cheese easier the closer we get to a rectangle shape the better although I'm generally not very good at doing that and I always seem to end up with something closer to an oval but that's fine because when it gets to about the thickness you want we can always stop and sort of stretch out the corners with our fingers to get this a little more square all right so that's what I did and then what we'll do once our dough is rolled out let's go ahead and spread on some prepared pesto which by the way was sold very close to that pizza dough I about and for whatever reason you're not into pesto a tomato sauce would work here or even a nice cheesy white sauce but the pesto was amazing and really did look gorgeous but regardless of which you use we'll go ahead and spread that over leave it about an inch unsought around the outside around the outside around the outside and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and lay over some thin slices of provolone or of course the cheese of your choice just make sure it's sliced fairly thin because we're gonna have to roll this up and yes if you press it down a little grated cheese will work and then once that's been cheesed we can apply our prosciutto which as you can see I'm sort of tearing into these jagged irregular ribbons which i think is gonna look nicer once this is cut and braided but I'm also doing that because the prosciutto I bought was really hard to separate and of course how generous you are with all these ingredients is going to be up to you but keep in mind like I said we do need to be able to roll this up so we'll lay down a generous but not too too generous layer that and then what I did next was not realized my battery on the camera had run out so I was not able to film the beginning of me placing on some chopped up pickled peppers which I think are incredibly important in this all right not only for the beautiful color but those sharp briny acidic bits really do how balance the richness of our meat and cheese and those were just your basic jarred Italian banana peppers and that's it once we're finished with our toppings we will go ahead and roll this up of course rolling in the direction that will give us the most length and when we get to the end because this was kind of oval ish it's not a bad idea to kind of pull and stretch the dough so that we end up with some sort of semi uniform log which we will also sort of press down and flatten out a little bit and then what we'll do once we have that into some sort of uniform shape is do a little bit of cleanup and we'll apply a little more flour to the surface at which point I'm going to grab my pizza wheel an attempt to cut this into three strips and because I'm cutting through meat and cheese and peppers I had to sort of use a combination of pressing slicing and rolling but eventually I was able to get through and we maybe could have used our bench scraper to cut that or even a knife I guess but a nice knife found a metal table always seems a little wrong but anyway the point is get that cut into three strips as even as possible and what this manoeuvre does for us is it's gonna expose all those gorgeous layers of dough and our ingredients or I check that out and once separated what I was hoping to do here was braid these all those expose cut sides facing up but then I have second thoughts which are not a bad thing in the kitchen all right you're allowed to have second thoughts but anyway my concern was was it if I braided this with all those cut sides facing up maybe all that stuff would start falling out so I decided to turn those strips on the outside back onto their side and just leave that one in the center facing up at which point I forgot how to braid things will actually not forget how to braid technically I forgot how to start a braid I mean I know you want to pinch all the ends together but then I never could seem to remember which one goes over which one to start but after a few seconds of fumbling and false starts I just grabbed a piece and started overlapping and then once I did that it all sort of came together and also please keep in mind once we shape this and it bakes the precision of your braiding is not going to be that noticeable and then once we do have that braided we will carefully shape that into some kind of small circular wreath without pressing and smashing everything down too much all right it really is all these jagged exposed edges it gives this thing it's amazing unique look and there really is no wrong way to do this just as long as you make sure your ends get tucked well underneath and that's it somehow someway I Italian party bread was shaped and ready to transfer onto a lined baking sheet and no this does not need any kind of egg wash or drizzle of olive oil or dusting of parmesan all right thanks to the fat in the mean cheese this is gonna create its own lustrous finish and that's it our party bread is now ready to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so or until beautifully browned and looking like one of the greatest things you've ever seen I mean come on okay it's like a small Italian deli exploded inside a loaf of bread and yes of course we have to let this cool down a little bit but it's fine to serve warm which I did and if you think this looks good just wait until you taste it okay it's sort of like a really nice crispy perfectly made Italian meat and cheese panini in a sliceable loaf of bread form and of course for you too and provolone are great together but when you combine that with that herbaceous girl he hid from the pesto and those briny sweet-and-sour bits of the pepper there's just a tremendous bite of food and please remember we're trying to create a new category of bread so this is not a recipe it's a method and a technique and the only reason this is an Italian party bread is because we're using Italian ingredients okay we could easily make this a Spanish party bread if we use serrano ham and Manchego cheese and membrillo and maybe some Spanish olives or of course we could do a French party bread with Gruyere cheese and Dijon mustard in a nice French ham okay so please feel free to experiment I mean you are after all the Bonnie and Clyde of what you put inside but having said all that this particular combination really was incredible and I guess if you're doing this for a party you could slice it up ahead of time but because it is so beautiful in its whole form I'd probably just serve it as is and put a knife next to it and let people slice off their own pieces and hopefully they can control themselves which I will tell you is not the easiest thing to do oh and then there was one more thing I wanted to mention if you do have any leftovers which is highly unlikely but if you do what you want to do is cut a couple thick slices and then brown it on both sides in a little bit of olive oil over medium heat and believe it or not you might even like this better than a slice of the original freshly baked bread especially if you include a nice runny egg to dip it in but officially I'm going to call it a time since both ways really are unbelievably amazing but whether you end up with leftovers or not I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 377,085

Keywords: Party, pizza, Bread, Italian, meat, cheese, chef, john, food, wishes, snacks, holiday, braid, loaf, festive, peppers, recipe, cooking

Id: 0DPCIlGloJA

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019