Bitchin’ Bread Battle Day 21: Roasted Garlic Bread in Meatloaf Grease

My Horta Meatloaf left me with a pretty dramatic amount of delicious grease pooled in the bottom of the pan. If your meatloaves don’t weep beautiful greasy juices, your meat is too lean. Next time start with hamburger labeled 85% lean. Your tastebuds will thank me. As I let some of my Horta’s vital life juices soak into a scrap of garlic bread I found myself wondering if it’d be even better with the artery clogging goodness baked right into a loaf.

I was right.

This experiment turned out to be one of the best darn things I’ve ever put in my mouth. It’s become my a staple the day after making a meatloaf. Heck, sometimes I get it started right after dinner. See if you’re not impressed, too.

Dough:

3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp dry yeast
1 tbsp honey
1/3 cup leftover meatloaf grease
1 head roasted garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
½ tsp kosher salt
1 egg
3 ½ cups flour

Topping
Another ¼ – ⅓ cup meatloaf grease
½ tbsp kosher salt

Start by mixing the warm water, dry yeast, and honey. Let the yeast go through it’s crazy resurrection for the next ten minutes. If your meatloaf grease is a solid, melt it in the microwave. Make sure it doesn’t get too warm. More than 110F and it’ll kill your yeast. You want the two of them to make sweet bready love, not fight to the death.

If you’re good at planning, roast a head of garlic while you make your meatloaf. Heck, roast two so you’ll have one to eat with dinner and one to put in the bread. If you don’t happen to have any roasted garlic, don’t worry. Just use 10 cloves (yes, really) of raw garlic and chop them up into a coarse mince. Yes, that’s a lot, but you’ll have a lot of bread to soak up the flavor. If you do have roasted garlic, squish all the cloves out of the head and use them as is. They’ll break apart in the process of mixing and kneading.

Once your yeast is ready, dump in everything but the flour. The flour can join in the fun after your liquids are well mixed. Attach your stand mixer’s dough hook, set it to the low speed of 2, and let it rip and tear at the dough for the next six minutes. If you don’t use a stand mixer, knead away by hand for 8-10 minutes.

Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and let it rise until doubled in size, about an hour.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down. Divide the mix half to make two loaves. Alternately, you can make one loaf and a batch of rolls (which will disappear instantly.)

Use a sharp knife to cut a cross hatch pattern into the dough. Now use a pastry brush to thoroughly coat the top with even more meatloaf grease. Carefully sprinkle kosher salt over the surface. The combination of these two delicious additions makes the crust taste like Vulcan sweat half way through Pon Farr. Let the dough rise a second time until once more doubled in size.

Tent a sheet of aluminum foil over the loaf. Bake at 375F for 25 – 30 minutes (or 14-16 minutes for rolls). Remove the foil half way through baking. It’s just there to ensure your top crust doesn’t burn.

If you want to serve your meatloaf infused bread with fresh meatloaf, wrap your second loaf in a few layers of plastic and freeze it. When you plan to make meatloaf for dinner, take your frozen loaf of bread out of the freezer that morning so it’ll be fully thawed by the time your meal is ready. The bread both freezes and slices very well.