Cheese & Mushroom Pull-Apart Bread

Browse Pinterest for inspiration for long enough, and some strange things start to happen to your sense of right and wrong. Two hours in, a search that may have started with a simple pan-seared duck breast eventually ends in “Mozarella Ganache Stuffed Nutella Coffee Cake Pancakes with Red Velvet Honey Mustard,” and you’re staring open-mouthed and dead-eyed at the screen, your senses so thoroughly overstimulated that you no longer know which end is up. It’s then that a dish like this begins to make sense.

And don’t get me wrong: This is crowd-pleasing party food at its best. It looks like it’s complicated, it’s great at absorbing alcohol, and it’s positively packed (packed!) with melted cheese. Once you’ve got the technique for slicing the bread mastered, you’ll be stuffing your bread with all kinds of combinations. How about a pizza version, stuffed with pepperoni and mozzarella, served with a sidecar of marinara for dipping? Or a “buffalo chicken” version, stuffed with pepper jack, blue cheese, shredded chicken, and Frank’s Red Hot? The mind wobbles.

Cheese & Mushroom Pull-Apart Bread
Serves 4-6; Adapted from a recipe by Beantown Baker

Ingredients:

• 8 oz sliced mushrooms
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 unsliced loaf sourdough bread
• 12 ounces sliced Provolone cheese
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 cup finely diced green onion
• 2 teaspoons poppy seeds

Method:

In a medium skillet over medium heat, combine butter, mushrooms, and thyme. Cook until mushrooms begin to brown, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the bread lengthwise, then widthwise, without cutting all the way through. Place loaf on a foil-lined baking sheet.

Stuff cheese slices and reserved mushrooms between the cuts. Use your fingers to push the mushrooms down into the loaf.

Combine melted butter, green onion, and poppy seeds. Drizzle over bread. Wrap in foil; place on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Unwrap foil and bake 10 more minutes, or until cheese is melted.

Tagged as: bread, cheese, mushroom, party food

About the Author: Malcolm Bedell

My first memories of cooking start in Maine at six years old, when I wore a yellow rainslicker to avoid getting spattered by the bacon I was frying in a skillet. My interest in both Mexican cooking and recreating classic New England dishes from scratch developed while living in Mexico, on a steady diet of pork and habanero peppers. You can see more of my writing and photography online on Serious Eats, the Huffington Post, BlogHer, and Foodista, as well as in print for Downeast, Indulge, and Cigar Snob magazines.