A few weeks back I had a friend over for dinner. I always love the smell of freshly baked bread when having company…so homey.  I had seen  a recipe on The Knead for Bread that I thought was pretty cool. It was a basic white bread, but rolled out like a jelly role, spread with pesto, rolled then sliced, finally twisted to ensure the pesto is spread throughout.  The technique is something I will bring to other “swirl breads”, it was beautiful!

I had an abundance of garlic scapes in the fridge that desperately needed to be used. No pine nuts and a guest who didn’t like Parmesan cheese.  So I worked with what I had. The result was a very tasty sun-dried tomato pesto.  I followed the bread recipe exactly.  It was a little dense, not as light of a crumb as I would have liked, but dunked in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, it was still very tasty.  And for a few days to keep it fresh and as a great snack, I found throwing it in the toaster for a light toast was perfect.

I won’t re-write the recipe for the bread on my site, as you could follow the very clear steps laid out on the original recipe’s site. However, I was happy with the “pesto” that was infused throughout, so instead, that is what you will find here.

Ingredients:

4 garlic scapes roughly chopped
1/4 cup toasted walnuts
6 sun-dried tomatoes softened (either soaked in hot water, or packed in olive oil)
1/4 cup black olives
Extra virgin olive oil
1 cup mozzarella cheese shredded
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

  1. Shred mozza and set aside
  2. Combine garlic scapes, walnuts, sun-dried tomatoes, and black olives  in food processor, puree.
  3. Add olive oil until everything comes together and makes a thick paste, probably about 1/3 of a cup
  4. Mix pureed mixture with mozzarella, season with salt and pepper.

A note that the garlic scapes will be very powering raw, but as they bake in the bread they totally mellow out.

Advertisement