Braided Spaghetti Bread

I had super high hopes for this recipe. One of my favorite restaurant meals is from a little family owned place, near where we lived when we were first married...Spaghetti Pie from Panino's. Yum! This Braided Spaghetti Bread reminded me of that and my mouth was watering just thinking about it.

First, let me say, do not plan this meal for an afternoon that you have errands to run and can't be around to babysit the thawing, rising dough like I did. Having never done anything with frozen bread dough before, I mistakenly thought that I'd only have to set it out on the counter to defrost and didn't realize there was more to it than that. Thankfully the 20 year old was around to help watch it and it all worked out with just a little bit of stress added to my day. (I'm feeling the need to apologize for the crappy cell phone pictures on these posts. It's all I have to use right now.)

The assembling part was pretty easy, although I'd recommend parchment paper. It wasn't the easiest getting the assembled braid moved from the counter to the baking sheet. Please forgive my messy braid, I was working quickly as I had to be out the door in 5 minutes to pick up a Craigslist purchase (again, better not to plan this one when you have running around to do) so I kind of just threw it together.

Now, I've said this before, but I sometimes wonder if my children were really birthed by me. Pasta, especially spaghetti, is one of my favorite things in the world. I chose spaghetti for my birthday dinner for about 15 years in a row. I always wanted mashed potatoes as a side dish but my mom always said no. I think they'd go great together!

But anyway, my 2 older boys do not care for pasta (except in mac and cheese) and really don't care for spaghetti. Craziness I tell ya! But the 5 year old said "Mmmm" about his and ate it without too much prodding. The 9 year old said it was "better than regular spaghetti" but still needed a lot of "Eat your dinner!"'s to finish it. My fellow pasta fan, the 20 year old loved it and had two helpings. I thought it was decent. Not quite the BEST MEAL EVER that I was hoping for, but pretty good. It was a bit too doughy or bready for me. I'd probably have some extra sauce for dipping next time and add more cheese. One can never have too much cheese.

We may make this again, if only because I now have 4

more frozen loafs of bread dough in my freezer to use up, but I don't think it will become a staple in our house.