No Cheese Please Braided Spaghetti Bread

Oh, my goodness!  Dinner tonight was soooo good!  I wanted to rush right over to the laptop so I could quick share with y'all how wonderfully delicious our dinner turned out, but I needed a shower, had to feed the dog, load the dishwasher and all that other "mom stuff".

Of course, as I finally get to sit down to type, the day is almost over.  Which, I guess is okay since I probably won't officially share this post here until sometime next week.

Many months ago, after seeing me post about Fried Spaghetti, my friend Nicole told me about this recipe.  She told me that she made it and about how amazing it turned out!  I knew this would be a great way to use up some leftover spaghetti!  I don't know about you, but when we have leftover pasta and meat sauce, I usually just dump them both into the same bowl and pop it into the fridge.

While the original recipe instructs you to cook some pasta, measure out some sauce, etc.  I just measured out 2 cups of leftovers!  Perfect use for that small bowl of leftover pasta that normally wouldn't be enough for another meal.

For some reason, all recipes that involves anything having to do with dough really intimidates me.  Potpies, dumplings, pizza.  If it didn't involve a can of biscuit dough, I usually just skipped it.  While this recipe is a far cry from homemade bread dough, I still felt unsure about attempting to make it.  Which most likely accounts for it taking me this long to get around to finally preparing this recipe!

As always, I adapted the recipe.  The original recipe includes cheese which I left out.  People that know me in real life will probably assume that I omitted the cheese on purpose since I'm not a huge fan.  But no.  I loved the idea of mozzarella cheese, I just didn't think we had any in the fridge.  Turns out, I didn't look hard enough!

Also, the original recipe called for parsley flakes.  When it came time to add those, laziness caused me to skip the trip to the basement pantry to retrieve my spice jar.  Instead, I topped with some Italian Seasoning and some crushed red pepper flakes!  Mmm!  Perfect!

The recipe below reflects how this recipe turned out tonight, sans cheese.

Braided Spaghetti Bread (no cheese)

Ingredients

• 1 loaf Rhode's frozen bread dough, thawed to room temperature
• 2 cups leftover spaghetti with meat sauce
• 1 egg white, beaten
• Italian Seasoning, to taste
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes, to taste

Cooking Directions

1. Lightly spray work surface with cooking spray.
2. Roll thawed dough into a 12 x 16 inch rectangle.
3. Cover with plastic wrap or dish towel and let rest for 10 minutes.
4. While dough is resting, reheat leftover pasta and sauce in microwave.
5. if desired, run a knife through the pasta a couple times.
6. Spread pasta and sauce mixture in a strip down the middle of the dough.
7. With a knife, make cuts about 1 1/2 inches wide (keeping about 1/2 inch away from pasta) into the dough on both sides of the pasta.
8. Fold the dough over the top and bottom of the rectangle, then continue braiding the stips left over right, right over left.
9. Spray large baking pan with cooking spray (I lined my pan with foil, sprayed with cooking spray, for easy clean up)
10. Carefully, move braid to the pan and brush top and sides with egg white.
11. Sprinkle with Italian Seasoning and Crushed Red Pepper Flakes.
12. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

The result?  Amazing!  Joe and I really had to show some self control to keep ourselves from devouring the entire loaf!

We still had a bit more leftover spaghetti in the fridge, so I thawed another loaf of bread dough and made this again over the weekend.  I'll share those results, soon!

A lot of times when we try a new recipe, we'll discuss over dinner how we could make it in the future.  I was thinking added pepperoni would be good, while Joe thought adding some sliced hot sausage would be good.  Leftover meatballs chopped up would be excellent, too!  

I'm thinking this might be the perfect food to serve the guys while they're watching some football!  Or as an appetizer for a dinner party.  Even as an alternative to pizza night!

No matter what the occasion, I know we'll be making many times in the next few months!  I'm already trying to decide when our next pasta night will be...just so I can use the leftovers!

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