This is What Happens When I Get Bored

I tend to wrap things up in dough and bake them. What kinds of things? Oh, say, meatloaf. Heh. Although I've also done apples, hamburgers, sausage, all kinds of other stuff. Now I know I've covered stuffed, braided bread before, but this time I have a couple new tips for it. And some better pics. So, since I had the dough that I was going to make the stuffed bread pot pie thing with, I just took a chunk of the meatloaf that I actually made and braided it into some. Well, first I rolled out the dough. Here, let me just show you.

First, I rolled out the dough. This dough was made by my brother in his Kitchen-Aid, so it's much more wet than dough made by hand. That's why there is so much flour on my board there. But this was a great dough to work with and had some really good flavor. Then I plopped a chunk of the meatloaf down on it (I actually put a little bbq sauce in there, just to make sure it stayed moist of course). Sliced it like normal for a braid, but this time I folded in the ends first. That's new tip number one. It worked out really well, I wish I had thought of it before. It kept the insides in and the ends nice and neat. Well, mostly. But then you do the braid thing. Left, right, left, right, one over the other. Once I got to the end I tied a half granny knot (but didn't get a good pic, sorry) and left it at that. Made it kind of look like a beet or something. New tip number two is this: if your strips aren't staying where you want them, put a little water on there and smoosh it a bit. Seems obvious, doesn't it? I didn't even think of it till this time. Ah well. I wound up moistening and pinching it in a couple places and everything stayed right where it should have. It was most satisfying. A little olive oil on top and then I just baked it on a hot pizza stone (preheated for an hour at 450) for about fifteen minutes and came out with this. Lovely, isn't it? Tasty too. It's amazing how you can take a simple thing like smoky, bacon-turkey meatloaf, wrap it in dough and make it... well, not fancy. I mean, it is still meatloaf. But it's wrapped in bread! That's something, anyway. Heh.