Stuffed Bread or Stromboli
- Tracy Scheckel
- Mar 15
- 3 min read
I grew up calling it stuffed bread and didn't hear the term Stromboli until I was in college. According to Wikipedia (which we all know is ALWAYS right), the Stromboli originated in Philly. The stuffed bread I grew up with was more bread and a spiral of filling when you sliced it. The Stromboli I experienced as a college student was essentially an envelope made from pizza dough that was filled with a variety of different ingredients including marinara sauce and mozzarella. You couldn't slice it and either needed to eat it with a fork and knife or take your chances on eating it like a hand-pie and either scalding you chin or wearing it when the ingredients oozed out.
My mother's stuffed bread usually included some kind of cured meat or cooked drained sweet sausage meat and mozzarella. My version is a bit more bold than Mom was with ingredients; on occasion, it's a way to clean out the refrigerator.
The version pictured here was made with smashed roasted garlic, sliced roasted plum tomatoes, sliced prosciutto, and spinach. In all honesty, my sole purpose in making it was for the photos for this post. I always keep frozen pizza dough in the house to use in a pinch or out of laziness. This batch was actually made with home-made (or should I say bread machine) pizza dough.
The important part of this recipe is how the loaf gets assembled and how it's baked. The ingredients, on the other hand, are entirely up to your imagination. Although Italian seasonings and ingredients are my typical go to, I've done ham, Swiss cheese, and dill with a Dijon aioli base, or broccoli and cheddar, even cream cheese, apples, and cinnamon sugar. Really, that dough is a clean palette, so have some fun with it!
THE RECIPE:
1 pizza dough
1T coarse corn meal
1T olive oil to coat the pan
A couple of cloves of roasted garlic smashed with some olive oil
A few slices thinly sliced prosciutto
Sliced plum tomatoes to cover about 1/2 of the dough
A handful or two of fresh baby spinach
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 cup shredded Asiago cheese
Preheat the over to 400 degrees, line a sheet pan with a silicone mat or parchment, and brush is with olive oil. Then sprinkle the cornmeal onto the sheet
Stretch the dough into a rectangle and lay it in the baking sheet. Either with your fingers or a polling pin, stretch it out until it almost fills the pan.
Spread the roasted garlic / olive oil mixture over he dough
Leaving about 2 inches of dough at one end and an inch or so along the long sides, place tomatoes to cover about 1/2 of the total dough area
Add the spinach leaves and prosciutto
Sprinkle the grated parmesan and all but a few shreds of Asiago on the dough
Begin rolling from the end that has no tomatoes etc.
Carefully roll completely making sure that the ends are pinched closed and not likely to leak. (This is especially important if using marinara sauce and more melty cheeses) To be safe, you can pinch and fold the ends under the loaf too, but that make the first and last slice mostly dough and little to no filling.
Carefully turn the loaf 90 degrees so that none of it is too close to the edge of the pan.
Once the loaf is rolled, press those last shreds of Asiago on top
bake until the top is a rich golden color and the loaf sound hollow when you tap is. This loaf took about 40 minutes in all.
Cooking time will depend on how much and how moist the filling is.
