Bacon & Cheese Bread Bowl

This is the ultimate sharing plate for a cheese and wine night with friends. Everyone can dunk some bread in the sauce and the best part is when the croutons for dipping are used up, you can slice the bowl into chunks that are soaked in the lovely sauce. Literally nothing goes to waste with this meal. It’s creamy, salty and moreish. It looks very impressive, despite how easy it is to make.

Ingredients

For sharing (roughly 6-8 servings) total calories = 2585**

• 1 crusty loaf sourdough (or any bread with a good hard crust that won’t go soggy from the filling)

• 150g bacon lardons

• 2 cloves garlic

• handful fresh chives, finely chopped

• 250g tub mascarpone

• 50g blue cheese, crumbled (I like gorgonzola, roquefort or cashel blue)

• Freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Fry off your bacon bits with minced garlic until desired crispiness, set aside.

2. Preheat oven to 180 Celcius

3. In a bowl mix your chopped chives, with the mascarpone, blue cheese, black pepper & bacon bits. Stir together and it should be a thick paste like consistency.

4. Take your loaf of sourdough and cut off the top. Using a sharp knife cut around the edge of the crust and scoop out the centre with your hand, so that the centre of the bread is hollow and like a bowl. Be careful to not cut through or scoop to the very bottom crust as the filling will fall through if bread isn’t crusty enough.

5. Spoon your filling into the bread bowl and cut the top of the bread and centre into large crouton shapes.

6. Bake at 180 until croutons are golden and sauce is bubbling inside the bread.

7. Best served hot. When all your croutons are eaten and a lot of sauce has been used, cut the remaining bowl into 8ths and nothing goes to waste.

**Calories based on my fitness pal may not be entirely accurate but should be used as a general guide for caloric density of the meal.