My whole life, it bothered me that we take bread and mix it with other ingredients to make stuffing. Look. I’m a weirdo, I know. But it never made sense to me. Why not take those ingredients and put them in the bread to skip a step? Why not make bread that tastes like stuffing?

The 2020 quarantine finally gave me the time and space to try my hand at bread baking. After one successful attempt at Ukrainian Easter bread (for my son Three), I thought, “You know what? This might finally be the year for stuffing bread.”

So I did it. I Franken-cobbled together recipes from three or four different sources for my first attempt, because I am most decidedly not a baker. But after several attempts of riffing off that first loaf, I managed to make this version that is my very own, bread that tastes like stuffing-obsessed brain child. I slice it and serve it with gravy and turkey on top, but you could just as easily shape it into rolls or a round loaf, if you want. Just make sure you have the right pans.

Stuffing Bread

Tierra

This is straight up a loaf of bread that tastes like stuffing. It makes unbelievable open faced turkey sandwiches with holiday leftovers.

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Prep Time 4 hours hrs 45 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 5 hours hrs 25 minutes mins

Course Appetizer, Side Dish

Cuisine American

Servings 12 slices

Equipment

• a large mixing bowl
• a loaf pan
• plastic wrap

Ingredients

  

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 ribs celery diced
• 2 small onions diced
• 16 ounces mushrooms diced
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
• 3 cups bread flour
• ½ tablespoon instant yeast (or ¼ ounces or 1 packet )
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• ¼ cup water*
• 10.5 ounce can cream of mushroom soup (cream of celery or cream of chicken also work)*
• 1 tablespoon chicken Better than Bouillon
• ¼ cup fresh sage leaves chopped

Instructions

 

• Pour the olive oil in a hot skillet. When it’s hot enough that a drop of water will pop in it, drop in the celery, mushrooms and onion and sauté. When they’re soft and it starts to smell really good in your kitchen, stir in the dried sage. Cook for three more minutes.
• In a big bowl, mix your flour, yeast and salt together with a fork. Add your liquids and bouillon to the bowl, then stir until it juuust starts to look like dough. Mix in the celery, onion, mushrooms and chopped sage. Try to get as much of the vegetables inside the dough ball as you can
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let your dough rest for 4 hours, and make sure it’s somewhere warm.
• Four hours later, preheat your oven to 450°F. Take your dough and fold it over on itself a couple of times. Now, you want to cover the bowl of dough loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for another 30 minutes.
• When your thirty minutes is up and the dough has slightly risen again, put it into a loaf pan with the seam side up.
• Bake it for 30 to 40 minutes. When it looks like something you want to eat, take it out of the oven. Put it on a rack to cool until it doesn’t burn your hands when you hold it. Slice and serve it with turkey and gravy.

Notes

*You just need to make sure you have about 12 ounces of liquid in your bread. It can be turkey stock, mushroom broth or whatever liquid it is you’d usually use to moisten your stuffing. Same with the herbs and vegetables – you have to use the same amounts for any substitutions.

Tierra

A malcontent with a heart of gold, Tierra is a first-year medical student, former high school teacher and history PhD candidate, plus mom to four of Bebe’s baddest kids. She curses a lot. Tierra is a DC native but lives in southwest Michigan and will happily exchange writing (hers) for cash (yours).