Stuffed Bread Boat

Early December and the planning calls with Sarah began for Christmas. The pattern was the standard pattern — turkey or ham (turkey, again), David's arrival timing, the gift-name draw, the menu allocation. Lucy will be here this year — her program breaks for two weeks between sessions, December 19 to January 2, and she will fly into Burlington on the eighteenth and stay through New Year's. Sarah was visibly relieved on the call when she gave me this news. The first Thanksgiving without Lucy had been hard for her in a way she had not anticipated, and Christmas with all five grandchildren in the house will reset the family pattern in a way she needs.

Made a beef chili Wednesday — the Vermont version, ground beef and beans and tomato sauce and a chipotle pepper, served with cornbread baked in the cast iron with bacon fat in the bottom. The chili is one of the cool-weather staples and held me through three suppers, the way a good chili always does. I ate it Wednesday with the cornbread, Thursday with rice, Friday on a baked potato — three different vessels, the same chili, the chili improving each night the way chilis do.

The blog post for the week was about the December cookie discipline — the schedule of cookie-making I do for Christmas, starting with the gingerbread (Helen's molasses-heavy recipe), then the shortbread (the Scottish kind from her grandmother), then the oatmeal cookies (the family standard with the overbake note), then the Russian tea cakes (Helen's sister Carol's contribution to the family canon, which I make in her honor every December even though I do not particularly love them). The schedule fills the second and third weeks of December and produces enough cookies to fill the tin and to give away to the neighbors and to put out on the table for the family arrivals. The post pulled the kind of comments a December cookie post pulls — bakers sharing their own family schedules, readers asking for specific recipes, people remembering their mothers' or grandmothers' kitchens at this time of year. I responded to most. The thread became a small temporary community of bakers passing recipes around, which is what the blog does best when it does its best work.

Frost has been slower this week — the cold mornings, the joints needing extra time, the slight reluctance to come outside that I had not seen before in him. I started warming his food slightly before serving it (a few seconds in the microwave to take the chill off) and the small kindness was received with the dignified appreciation a working dog reserves for kindnesses he did not ask for. We continue. We are both a little slower. Neither of us is unduly bothered by it.

The chili carried me through three suppers — Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — and when it was gone I was looking for something else with the same quality of substance, the same sense of a kitchen doing its proper work in cold weather. A stuffed bread boat has that quality: it is a thing you make because the house needs filling and the people in it need feeding, which is the same impulse behind the chili, behind the cookie schedule, behind all of December’s kitchen work. With Lucy coming in on the eighteenth and the grandchildren arriving in stages, I want food on the counter that people can pull from — the bread boat fits that purpose exactly.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 large Italian or sourdough bread loaf (about 12–14 inches)
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 lb bulk Italian sausage, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup diced green bell pepper
1/3 cup diced yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat and prepare the loaf. Heat oven to 375°F. Slice the top third off the bread loaf lengthwise. Hollow out the bottom, leaving about a 3/4-inch shell of bread on all sides. Tear the removed bread into rough cubes and set aside.
Cook the vegetables. In a skillet over medium heat, sauté the onion and bell pepper in a small drizzle of oil until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Make the filling. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and sour cream together until smooth. Fold in 3/4 cup of the shredded cheddar, the cooked sausage, the sautéed vegetables, paprika, salt, and pepper. Mix well to combine.
Fill the boat. Spoon the filling into the hollowed bread shell, pressing it in gently and mounding it slightly above the rim. Scatter the remaining 1/4 cup of cheddar over the top. Place the filled loaf on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake. Bake at 375°F for 20–25 minutes, until the cheese on top is melted and beginning to brown at the edges and the filling is heated through. The bread shell should feel crisp to the touch on the outside.
Rest and serve. Let the bread boat rest 5 minutes before slicing. Garnish with chopped parsley. Serve the reserved bread cubes alongside for dipping into any filling that spills over.

Nutrition (per serving)

Stuffed Bread Boat — The Warm, Loaded Loaf That Belongs on a December Table