Coming from an Italian background, I like to expose my children to various foods from the culture. Sure they eat plenty of pasta and meat dishes from my families’ region of Italy, but I wanted to combine some familiar ingredients to make a new Italian favorite for them. Italian Pull-Apart bread is so simple to prepare that you can have your kids help you in the kitchen. Oh, and you don’t have to be Italian to love it! I started out with pre-made pizza dough that I picked up at the super market. We make our own pizzas each week and not having to prepare the dough makes my life a lot easier. I also used prepared pesto sauce. You are certainly welcome to make your own pesto and dough if you wish.
I cut the dough into small squares. You will be rolling these into little balls.
I had some help with this step. This is a great job for kids. It is very similar to playing with play dough so they will have fun while helping.
You will then add your pesto and place the dough balls in a loaf pan. Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella on top and bake.
The dough balls will rise a bit and the cheese will start to brown.
If you are serving this at a party or to a group of people, you can just slip it out of the pan and serve next to some warmed marinara sauce so guests can pull apart the bread and dip.Since I was serving some of the Italian pull-apart bread to my kids I gave them each a few pieces with some marinara sauce on the side in a Zak divided plate. They gobbled this right up!
Zak’s divided kid’s plate works great for dipping pull-apart bread in marinara. If there is any left over, I highly recommend warming it up before serving it. There is just something about the warm dough with the gooey cheese that makes it a shame to serve this at room temperature.
