Sunday, May 6, 2012

French Spaghetti.

To be quite honest, spaghetti isn't my favorite. 

Actually, I don't usually enjoy eating spaghetti. I need to be in a mood for it. Everyone else? They'll eat it like chocolate. Bleh.

In an attempt to make it easier for me to eat spaghetti..well..



...yeah. It's like a spaghetti calzone. And it's pretty great. I used my french bread recipe for the bread, but you can use frozen dough.

This is a SUPER easy dinner, a hit with the kids, but time consuming.

French Braided Spaghetti Bread

Bread dough (whatever dough you prefer, but I'd suggest french bread dough, and it can be store bought or homemade)
Spaghetti prepared to your liking, with sauce
Mozzarella cheese, the amount will vary on what you want
1 egg white
Grated parmesan cheese (again, the amount will vary)
Parsley, garlic powder, oregano, etc., to your liking

First, roll out your dough. You want it to be NO longer than a cookie sheet. And it may be easier if it's a rectangle.


Once it's rolled out, you can put it on a sheet of parchment paper and let it wait while you work on your spaghetti. I'd suggest doing that. I didn't and..well..you'll see.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Prepare your spaghetti and sauce.
I like to heat my sauce in a pot while the spaghetti is cooking, and add a pound of browned ground beef. Sometimes, I'll do half a pound of ground beef and half a pound of italian sausage.


Add your sauce to your cooked and drained spaghetti.


Now pour your spaghetti down the middle of your dough.


Now top your spaghetti with your mozzarella.


This is the fun part. Taking a sharp knife, cut 1- 1 1/2 in. strips in the dough. You want them to start REAL close to the spaghetti. Now take your strips and bring them over the spaghetti, alternating which side you're folding from.


Continue doing that until you've done all the strips.


Okay, so remember how I said to go ahead and put the dough on the parchment paper before the braiding and everything? Yeah. I didn't. What I did was line my cookie sheet with parchment paper, and then sprayed it with some cooking spray.


And then it took my husband and myself to CAREFULLY move my spaghetti bread to the pan. It's heavy, pretty warm, and the dough is stretchy and..learn from me. Do all the cutting and braiding and whatnot ON THE PARCHMENT PAPER FIRST. Then transfer the parchment paper with your loaf onto the cookie sheet.


Now brush the top of your loaf with your egg white.


Top it with your parsley, oregano, etc. 


Bake it for about 30-ish minutes, until the bread gets golden.


Nomnom, right?!


I actually REALLY enjoyed eating the spaghetti like this.


So did everyone in the family.


This was a good sized amount. And it went to THAT by a family of 4, 2 of those being kids ages 5 and 1. 

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