Remember the incredibly easy bread recipe I shared with you?
You know…
This one?
Minimal hands on work* takes a hunk of basic boule dough and makes it this beautiful, crusty loaf of artisan bread, however, if you’ve got a few extra minutes you can take your boule dough and make it something even more extraordinary.
*About thirty seconds of shaping the dough and ten seconds of dusting and slashing the top. Simple.
For years now, I’ve been ordering the garlic bread quattro formaggio at one of our favorite local restaurants. It’s addictive. The fresh garlic, melty gooey cheeses, and crusty bread all combine to form a loaf of temptation no one at the table is ever strong enough to resist.
Our last couple visits we’ve been kind of disappointed. Our entrees lacked the usual bold Italian flavor we crave and, on our last visit, the bread kind of fell flat…in taste and presentation. Hubby put them on notice, so now whenever I think of suggesting them for dinner, I stop myself.
Then I think about the bread and find myself missing it so badly it hurts.*
*Please tell me you feel this way about food you love, too.
While at a point of desperation, I realized, Wait a minute. I make my own bread. Why haven’t I tried making my own quattro formaggio?
So here it is, my version: Quattro Formaggi Pane (all’aglio)
You’ll need:
1 pound boule dough
Olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup Parmesan
1 cup Mozzarella
1/4 cup Asiago
1/4 cup Feta cheese, crumbled
Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal.
I weigh my dough because I’m a a geek and want everything precise.
A note on cheese:
Since the original dubbed it ‘quattro’ I’ve tried to stick with using four cheeses, however, I encourage you to play around with your cheese choices and measurements. The original had mozzarella, Pecorino Romano, blue cheese, and provolone. While I loved the balance they created with these cheeses, two of the four I often avoid, and when I tried to use the provolone in one of my early attempts, I found it masked the other cheeses and created a texture I wasn’t thrilled with.
Lightly flour a clean surface. Roll the dough into a 8 x 15 rectangle with the short side facing you. Brush olive oil on the surface of the dough. Sprinkle garlic on top.*
*Please, for the love of everything that is flavorful and garlicy, please please please use fresh garlic. I get it. Nobody likes their fingers smelling like garlic three hours after mincing it, (the trick is to rub your fingers against stainless steel while rinsing them in water) but the jarred stuff simply will not cut it!**
**And I say this as a fan and frequent lazy user of the jar of minced garlic my refrigerator is always stocked with.
Sprinkle on the cheeses.
Roll the dough from the short end closest to you until you have a log.
Place the log on the prepared pizza peel. Allow it to rest for forty minutes. After twenty minutes have passed, place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and a broiler pan on the rack directly below. Preheat the oven to 450°.
Right before the bread goes into the oven, brush the top with olive oil. Make 4-5 slashes across the width of the dough.
After placing the bread on the stone, quickly pour 1 cup of hot water into the broiler pan. Bake for 30 minutes.
Remember, fresh garlic! Fresh garlic is what makes this bread! Sure the cheeses are the main attraction, but the fresh garlic is what pulls it all together and really makes it sing.
It’s also what convinced me, the more I made this bread, that I no longer need to crave the old garlic bread quattro formaggio.
This one will do just fine.
Quattro Formaggi Pane (all’aglio)
Ingredients:
1 pound boule dough
Olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup Parmesan
1 cup Mozzarella
1/4 cup Asiago
1/4 cup Feta cheese, crumbled
- Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal.
- Lightly flour a clean surface. Roll the dough into a 8 x 15 rectangle with the short side facing you. Brush olive oil on the surface of the dough.
- Sprinkle garlic on top.
- Sprinkle on the cheeses, evenly covering the dough to the edges.
- Roll the dough from the short end closest to you until you have a log.
- Place the log on the prepared pizza peel. Allow it to rest forty minutes. After twenty minutes have passed, place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and a broiler pan on the rack directly below. Preheat the oven to 450°.
- Right before the bread goes into the oven, brush the top with olive oil. Make 4-5 slashes across the width of the dough.
- After placing bread on stone, quickly pour 1 cup of hot water into the broiler pan.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
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