mmm mmm mmm

I have been on a new recipe kick lately and the of course that means I have been scouring Pinterest for ideas, not to say I don't have recipes already pin'd...I do have 85 already pin'd to my "yummy eats & treats" board. Well Wednesday's new recipe was Braided Spaghetti Bread. I saw this image:

and thought "spaghetti, sauce, AND bread all in one??? genius!" So yep this was my challenge today. No, I was not going to settle for "jar sauce" like the recipe calls for (don't get me wrong, in a pinch I am a huge fan of "jar sauce", of course with a little "doctoring" as Matt calls it) but with the fact that I have nothing BUT time on my hands now why not go all in and make the sauce too :)

This time around I tried to take pictures as I went

I combined the noodles, sauce, and meat in a big bowl before putting it all on the bread and topping it with the cheese chunks (which got good and melty)

at first I thought I hadn't rolled the bread out thin/big enough but then as I closed up the bread and transferred it to the pan I realized it was actually pretty big...hence curling up the sides of the pan

there's

and mine...I think it turned out pretty similar. And btw it was super good and totally made it's way into the "Make Again" recipe box.

Side note about the sauce...I used this recipe as a starting off point but didn't really follow the recipe (because we didn't have an onion or white wine, which was the real shocker haha), but rather this is what I did :

30 oz thawed, blanched tomatoes from my in-laws' summer garden
6 oz can tomato paste
2 Tbsp dried parsley
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh crushed black pepper
6 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1) saute the garlic in the EVOO over med. heat
2) combine the rest of the ingredients, stir and simmer for 30 min

Yep definitely not as many steps as the originally recipe but it still turned out great! And personally we really liked the chunks in the sauce rather than putting it all thru the food processor.