You are going to love this Gooey Tear & Share Cheesy Bread Recipe! It delivers on all my requirements when it comes to entertaining. It’s a simple recipe, using simple ingredients. It goes together easily and quickly. It is just at home on a buffet table as it is on the coffee table, and it truly is delicious! I call that a Win/Win/Win situation! It is also a great make-ahead recipe, right up to the point of popping it into the oven.
Jump straight down to the short recipe!
The next few months mark the beginning of the busy season when it comes to Entertaining! With Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in the offing, along with Football season, etc. these months are some of the busiest of the year when it comes to feeding our family and friends with “Occasion” quality foods! I don’t know about you, but I really love to prepare delicious dishes that I know my loved ones will enjoy!
Pleasing them is at the top of my list, but I also want the recipes I prepare to be quick and easy as well, getting me in and out of the kitchen as quickly as I can, giving me the freedom to enjoy the company of my guests as much as possible. Recipes which don’t create a lot of work for me, but which really deliver on taste are the order of the day!
Gathering the Ingredients
As you can see, it doesn’t require a lot of ingredients! You will want to use a good basic bread loaf as the base. You should use a loaf which is quite sturdy and that will stand up to the wear and tear it’s going to go through. I like a nice sourdough myself.
It should be oval in shape and deep enough to be able to carve a bread “bowl” into it. I like it to have a nice crisp crust, and I’ll be honest, it works better if the bread is not totally fresh. Day-old or even two-day-old bread is better than fresh on the day.
It uses two cheeses, a rich and runny Camembert and a round goat’s cheese. You will also need a sprig of rosemary, a clove of garlic, some extra virgin olive oil and some sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper.
Chopping the Cheese
You need to remove the rinds from both cheeses. Make sure your cheese is quite cold when you do this. It is a lot easier to remove the rinds and cut the cheese into chunks when your cheese is cold. The Goat’s cheese will probably be easier to crumble than to cut into chunks.
Once you have cut/chopped/crumbled the cheeses, set them aside in a bowl while you prepare the oil for brushing.
Preparing the Oil, Herbs, and Garlic
You can either crush the peeled garlic using a good garlic crusher or you can chop the rosemary leaves and garlic together with a sharp knife, which is my preferred method. I use a rocking motion with my chef’s knife moving it back and forth across both on my cutting board until I get the consistency that I want. You will want both to be very fine.
Once you have made this a few times you may even want to branch out and explore using a variety of fresh herbs. Fresh thyme, or marjoram are both very nice and go well with garlic.
The herbs and garlic will be mixed into the olive oil which you will be brushing on the bread prior to baking it. You simply stir the mixture into some good extra virgin olive oil along with some fresh ground black pepper.
A pepper grinder is key to this and you will want to set yours on a coarse grind. You don’t need to use the most expensive olive oil, but you will want to use a good one with a nice fruity and peppery balance of flavours.
Cutting the Bread Bowl
The fiddliest part of making this is preparing the bread for filling. You need to cut a circular bowl-shaped hole out of the middle of the loaf. I use a 4 inch in diameter sharp round pastry cutter the best to use as a pattern for creating the right shape.
I press it into the surface of the centre of the loaf to mark the shape, and then I use a serrated knife to cut around it on the surface. Once you have that done, you can simply pull it off and then use your fingers to pull out the rest.
You will want it to be not much more than 1 ½ inches deep. (You can use the bread you have removed to make bread crumbs and then freeze them for future use so nothing goes to waste here.)
After that you will want to make cross-hatched cuts into the bread on both ends of the loaf, next to, but taking care not to cut into the bread bowl. Using a good serrated bread knife make cuts diagonally one way and then the other, cutting almost all the way down to the base and spacing them 1 inch apart.
This is where using bread that is not too soft or fresh comes in handy. If your bread is too fresh, you will have a difficult time doing this. It’s not totally impossible, but we are wanting things to be easy here.
Final Assembly
Once your bread is all prepared the rest is a bit of a doddle. Simply place the loaf onto a baking sheet and fill the “bowl” with your chopped cheeses.
Take a pastry brush and start brushing the herb and garlic oil down into the diagonal cuts, working the mixture into them as best as you can, as well as brushing some of the oil across the surface of the bread.
You may need to add a touch more oil to the mix, if you find you are running out of oil. Once you have the cuts and the surface oiled, sprinkle some sea salt flakes all over, cover the whole thing lightly with some aluminium foil and bang the baking tray it into a preheated 400°F oven. That’s it! Easy as pie!
Ready and Done
Twenty-Five minutes later you will be rewarded with a delectably oozy bread bowl of delicious cheese with lots of crispy bits for dipping. Simply pop it onto a decorative platter or bread board, garnish the melted cheese with a small spring of rosemary (if desired) and set it out for your guests and family to enjoy!
They will love tearing off chunks of garlicky toasty bread and dipping them into that exquisite, rich and delectably oozy cheese!
This is sure to become a firm and fast holiday entertaining favourite! Your guests will love it because it is so delicious, and you will love it for its ease of preparation. You can actually prepare it well ahead of time, simply popping it into the oven about half an hour before you want to serve it. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy as they say!
Gooey Tear and Share Cheesy Bread Short Recipe
Variable Servings
With the entertaining season coming up this delicious appetiser is ready in minutes and perfect for a casual gathering.
Ingredients
- 9-ounce round of Camembert Cheese
- 3 ½ ounce round Goat’s Cheese
- 1 (1 pound) Loaf of Sour Dough or Italian Bread, unsliced
- 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 fresh spring of rosemary, leaves finely chopped
- ¾ tsp sea salt flakes
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Trim the rinds from both cheeses and discard. Chop the cheese roughly and set aside.
- Cut a circle 4 inches in diameter and 1 ½ inches deep in the top and centre of the loaf. This will become a bowl to hold the melted cheese.
- Cut the remainder of the loaf in a crosshatch pattern, cutting almost down to the base and spacing the cuts about 1-inch apart.
- Whisk the oil, garlic, chopped rosemary leaves and some freshly ground black pepper together in a bowl.
- Transfer the prepared loaf to a baking tray. Brush the garlic rosemary oil all over the surface of the loaf, working it down into the cuts. Sprinkle the flakes of sea salt overall.
- Place the chopped cheeses in the “bowl” in the centre of the bread. Cover the loaf loosely with aluminium foil.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes until golden brown and the cheese is oozingly melty. Place onto a decorative platter and serve immediately.
Complete Steps in Pictures
Step 1 – Gather the ingredients Step 2 – Cut the cheeses Step 3- cut the herbs and garlic Step 4 – mix with olive oil Step 5 – Cut the bread bowl and patches Step 6 – Add the cheese and baste with sauce Step 7 – Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes Step 8 – DONE! Eating the cheesy bread 
Serving suggestion!
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