An Easy and Impressive Starter: Genoa Cheese Bread

Every so often we like to invite over some friends to eat with us. It's a great way to try out new recipes and see how they do. Plus there's no better way to spend time with friends than over great food and generously flowing wine in the comfort of your own home!

This has become one of our favorite appetizers to serve at such events because it's easy to do, but it's impressive, tasty, and feeds a lot!

Making the Bread

To start, mix a cup and a half of warm water with a tablespoon of yeast, and let it sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes or so until it's starting to froth. Once this is done, add in a quarter cup of olive oil, and a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. Blend it all together, and then add in 4 cups of bread flour.

Mixing the dough together. Using your hands makes it messy, but more fun!

You can substitute all purpose flour for bread flour if you need to, but the bread flower really makes this come off a lot better. It's a simple substitution that will pay big dividends on the final preparation. 

Kneading dough, step one. Get it on a floured surface, and push down and out. 

Mix together all of the ingredients and then start to knead the dough. Do this on a flat, floured surface, and add more flour as needed so that the dough does not stick. Knead it for about 15 minutes. This is a monotonous job, but really important to get the dough to the right consistency. 

Kneading dough (again). As we mentioned, this can get monotonous :) 

When it's all set, drop it in an oiled bowl and cover it, and let the dough rise for about two hours. It should be left in a warm place so that the yeast can work its magic properly. We've found that putting the covered bowl right by our heating unit generally works the best. 

The dough rests in an oiled bowl as it rises. 

After it's risen for about 2 hours (likely it will have doubled in size at this point), punch it down and then let it rise again for 30 minutes. I honestly have no idea why you're supposed to do this, but every recipe says to do it. So.... do it. 

The topping for this is really quite simple - two types of cheeses (pecorino romano, and parmesan - a cup of each), rosemary, scallions, salt (a tablespoon), and olive oil (3/4 cup). Prepare the rosemary by simply pulling the leaves from the stem, and slice three or four scallions, using both the green and white parts.

Separating the rosemary leaves from the stem. 

Divide your dough in half and roll each out into a rectangle, approximately 11 in x 17 in. Using your index finger, poke dimples all across the surface of the dough.

Adding dimples all over the surface of the bread. This enhances the texture of the final product. 

Then, scatter the cheese across both, followed by the rosemary, scallions, and olive oil. Lastly, sprinkle on sea salt (be sure to use the sea salt instead of table salt as this will provide both salinity as well as a crunchy texture). 

Toppings are scattered all over the bread as it gets ready to go in the oven. 

Place both pieces into an oven at 375 and let cook for about 12 - 15 minutes, until it's a nice golden brown. 

Veggies are charred, crispy, and delicious, and the cheesy salty crust is ready to eat. 

You can slice it up or let people tear from the bread directly. Either way, it's really delicious and quite a crowd pleaser. Give it a try!

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