Tomato and Cheese Wreath Bread
This tomato sauce and cheese wreath has a nice crust and soft gooey middle filled with tomato sauce, cheese, seasonings and fresh basil. It has all the flavors of pizza and more. Fun to put together and holiday showstopper.
Serve this warm right out of the oven with some extra dipping sauce, pesto and wow your guests. If you do not want to make the dough, then buy pizza dough from outside and just make the filing which literally takes 10 minutes.
Overall, recipe is simpler than you think to make, uses basic ingredients available at home like flour, salt, yeast, and dough is enriched with milk and just a little milk powder. The marinara sauce is also prepared at home, by reducing the sauce with Italian seasonings and some cheese. Then it’s pretty much just assembling everything. It’s so perfect for the holiday season.
I love serving some show stopping appetizers while everyone is enjoying drinks and getting to meet everyone.
What is a Bread Wreath?
Bread Wreath is just a nice bread-based appetizers or side dish, which is shaped in the form of a wreath.
This recipe has a bread/pizza dough rolled out and filled with marinara sauce, cheese, seasonings, and basil. Then it’s rolled into a log shape, then circle like a wreath and I cut it with scissors in way to open and create a little design. Obviously, my design didn’t come up as I expected it. When you are dealing with soft yeasted dough that can happen, but honestly, I don’t care, and I personally loved the rustic look. So, never be disappointed. It may look difficult or complicated but it’s easy.
When you roll the dough, you want it to be long as possible as it can be, so that there is enough room in the middle to have a hole.
Keep all the toppings ready so once you roll out the dough, quickly fill in and work your way to creating the wreath design.
You must work speedily at this point, as yeasted dough starts acting or rising again. After filling in it rolled into log and then a circle. At this stage if your dough is very soft, and not pliable then put it in fridge for few minutes. It gives cleaner cuts and easy to handle.
Then get a pair of sharp and clean scissors to cut our rolls at an angle. The shape of the scissors should be in kind of ‘V’ pointing down and it will give pointy edge. You do not want to cut through all the way bottoms. The bottom should be intact.
While cutting it with scissors I alternated rolls. Cut and move it to right. Second time cut and move it to left. Keep doing that until you come around the whole wreath.
This can be made ahead to be enjoyed on holidays. You can prepare few parts in advance.
Bread dough 
tomato sauce 
Cheese and Basil 
Log circle 
Shaping the wreath 
Tomato and Cheese Wreath Bread
Ingredients
Bread dough or use store -bought pizza dough
- 2 ½ cup All-purpose flour or Bread flour
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp milk powder
- ¾ cup milk
- 4 tbsp butter
- 2 tsp active dry yeast
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- ¼ tsp oregano
- 1 cup thick marinara sauce
- Tomato sauce
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp Italian seasonings salt, parsley, oregano, rosemary, thyme, dried basil, black pepper, red chili flakes etc
- 1 tsp grated garlic
- ¼ cup chopped basil
- 2 tbsp parmesan cheese
- 1-2 cups mozzarella cheese shredded
- ½ cup pecorino romano
- 2 tbsp pine nuts
- Cherry tomatoes for garnish
- 2 tbsp milk or cream for washing on top
Tomato
Instructions
- Place the all-purpose flour, sugar, salt, milk powder and yeast in the bowl of stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. If you do not have a stand mixer, you can do it by hand too. Give it a light mix. You can also add oregano and black pepper.
- Warm milk in microwave until it is warm to touch around 110F. Milk should not be too hot, or else it will kill the yeast. Mix in the butter too in the milk. Let it melt too.
- Now, pour this liquid into the flour mixture. Beat the mixer for 3-4 minutes on slow. Once dough is formed. Lift the dough into ball. Use dry flour if it’s too sticky. If you are making it by hands, just mix everything and make dough.
- Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Place it in a slight warm place until it rises and doubles in size for 90 minutes.
- Prepare the tomato sauce if you have not already prepared it. We need to cool it down before adding to the bread. Shred the cheese or use shredded cheese and leave it aside.
- Assemble the wreath – When the dough has doubled in size after 90 minutes, punch it down to release all the air bubbles. Lightly flour the surface you will be rolling out your dough.
- On a lightly floured surface with flour, roll out the dough into a rectangular shape approximately ¼ inch and 17 inches long. Spread cooled tomato sauce onto the dough leaving about 2 cm edges. Starting from the long side, tightly roll the dough into a log.
- Place the log on piece of parchment paper on a tray. Form a circle by bringing both ends together.
- Using a pair of scissors, cut diagonally at 45’ angle to create slits and pointed roll. When you cut into the dough not all the way through, make sure you leave a little dough intact at the bottom so that the wreath maintains its shape. Once you cut one roll, move it to right. Cut another roll and move it to left. Keep doing it until the whole wreath is shaped.
- If you like you can also keep all the rolls on one side may be just the left or just the right. It will be a different looking wreath.
- Cover the wreath and leave it aside to rise again for 10-20 mins. We don’t want too much rise. Just a little. In my case my dough was already risen while I was shaping it. You can see in the pictures. So, if that’s the case you can bake it immediately.
- When the wreath is risen and puffy, pre heat oven to 375’ F. Brush the heavy cream or milk or even an egg wash if you eat eggs on the wreath. This gives color to it while it bakes. Bake it for 20-25 minutes or until its golden light in color.
- Remove it from the oven and let it cool down few minutes before serving. Ideally, it should be served slightly warm so that the cheese is melty inside.
- When serving it, garnish it with some pine nuts, cherry tomatoes, extra freshly grated parmesan cheese, basil, some herbs. You can also put some dipping sauce like tomato, alfredo or pesto in the middle of the wreath for dipping extra bits.
- To prepare the filling
- Add all the ingredients to a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until the mixture has thickened. Set it aside to cool.
- Notes
- The wreath is best enjoyed the day it is prepared. Leftover can be warmed up in the oven or toaster oven. Store it in an air-tight container in the fridge.