Super Bowl Snacks 3: Garlic Bread Bowl with Spicy Pizza Dip

Ok, last Super Bowl snack, I promise. My girl Rachael Ray had this recipe in her January magazine and everyone agreed it was going to be a great decision.

Garlic Bread Bowl with Spicy Pizza Dip

Ingredients
1 large round loaf soft italian bread
3 T. EVOO
2 large cloves garlic, 1 halved
1/2 c. chopped onion
10 oz. hot italian sausage
1 jar (16 oz.) pizza sauce
4 oz. fresh mozzarella
1 T. freshly grated parmesean
1 T. fresh oregano I used basil instead

Directions:
Preheat to 400 with a rack in the middle of the oven. Cut the center out of the bread and hollow it out so it forms a bread bowl.
2. Make the bread you pulled out into rectangle-ish dippers. Spread onto a baking pan and drizzle with EVOO; toss. Place the bread bowl on the baking sheet as well. Bake until the inside of the bowl is toasty (about 5 min)
3. Rub the cut halves of garlic on the inside of the bread bowl. Toss the dippers again with EVOO and bake them again for 5 minutes. Increase heat to 450.
4. Heat dutch oven over medium heat and add remaining tablespoon of EVOO. I used a cast-iron skillet here (the 10 incher) and it worked great
Add onions and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Chop remaining garlic clove and add.
Add sausage, breaking it into chunks until it begins to brown, about 5 minutes. The sausage I bought was cased so I cut that off and squeezed approximately 10 oz in the pan.
Add pizza sauce. Cook until heated through, about 5 minutes.
5. Return the bread bowl to your baking sheet. Ladle in the sauce and top with cheeses. Bake until cheese is brown, about 10 minutes. Top with oregano. I have basil growing through the roof so instead of oregano I chopped basil into the sauce and also to go on top.

This dip was SUPER yummy but we really needed a lot more dippers. We were tearing the bowl apart to use, of course, but it would have been better to have some more pieces to start out with.

 

And thus concludes my part of our Super Bowl feast!