This recipe (from the very nice folk at Betty Crocker) showed up in my email sometime last fall, and I quickly stashed it in my ‘try this’ recipe file.
“A fine fall dinner go-with” I thought.
Then “mebbe for the Holiday gathering.”
Finally, it was “I have to do something with all this bacon!” that got me to toss a batch of this fine and tasty bread together to go with our vegetarian dinner of the week.
Yeh… well, around here, even a vegetarian dinner goes better with bacon.
The dinner was ok – we both thought it could stand a lot more garlic (and mebbe some cream) – but the bread…
the bread is just a load of bacon and cheese-y goodness that would gladden most any heart and will be on the menu for our next gathering.
The nice folk at Betty Crocker also included a dipping sauce recipe, which I made, and think is really very good; but this bread don’t need no dipping sauce.
Still, you do what you like.
INGREDIENTS
Bread:
•3-1/2 cups Bisquick®
•1/2 tsp seasoned salt
•6 tbsp butter, softened
•1/2 cup milk
•1 egg, slightly beaten
•8 oz bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled
•2 cups (8 oz) shredded Cheddar cheese
Dipping Sauce:
•1/2 cup mayonnaise
•1/2 tsp garlic powder
•1/2 tsp onion powder
•1 tbsp Italian seasoning
I used uncured bacon, seasoned it with Gateway to the North Maple Garlic Seasoning, garlic powder, and Tellicherry pepper, and cooked it in the ‘wave according to the keypad instructions – little muss, no fuss, and nicely seasoned bacon.
Set the bacon aside to cool, then make the dipping sauce by stirring the mayonnaise together with the seasonings. As I noted above, the bread really doesn’t need this sauce, but your next sammich (mebbe with some of that plum sauce and vinegar roast pork?) or burger might very well could, so go ahead and put a batch together and stash it in the fridge until needed.
Heat your oven to 350° and apply cooking spray to a large (9x5x3 inch) loaf pan.
Using your hands, combine the Bisquick with the bacon, egg, cheese, seasoned salt, milk, and three tablespoons of the butter in a large bowl until you have a crumbly kinda dough.
Shape the dough into one inch balls – I used a cookie scoop to help me gather and compress it – and arrange in the prepared loaf pan. I had enough dough to make two layers of bacon cheddar dough balls.
Drizzle the remaining three tablespoons of butter over the dough balls and bake for 35 minutes, or until the bread is nicely golden brown.
Remove from the oven, let rest for a few minutes, then turn out onto a platter and serve – with or without the sauce.
Very nice fresh from the oven with dinner, and not too, too bad the next morning for breakfast.
One could, I would think, make a batch, divide it into individual servings, then enjoy it as a nibble on the run to work or school.
One could also, I would think, substitute crumbled cooked breakfast sausage for the bacon, and/or perhaps sauté any leftover bread balls in a bit of butter and drizzle ’em with some good maple syrup…
hmmm…