If you love the bread that is served before your meals at restaurants and want to make that at home, then this is the bread recipe for you! This olive oil and Parmesan bread is so easy to make and uses already baked store bought boule (a round bread).
I suppose it is not really a true bread recipe as much as a great trick to make something that is already baked even better.
By purchasing the bread already baked, putting this together was a breeze. The addition of olive oil, a little butter, oregano and Parmesan make this bread so delicious and like it was like eating homemade bread, not like something bought at the store.
The inside stays nice and soft and the outside is like eating a yummy Parmesan crusty bread. Be careful trying this because it is addictive!
This bread is great served with pasta, grilled meat or even on it's own as an appetizer. I love serving it for pasta nights in our house to make it feel like a classic Italian American restaurant experience. My favorite meal to serve this with is my Italian meatballs. I also love making this to serve alongside my pasta Genovese.
I often skip the pasta and just serve this Easy Parmesan bread with the meatballs and sauce and use the bread to dip into the marinara. It is so good! Honestly, there really is no wrong way to serve this bread.
You can change up the seasonings in this bread to suite your taste as well. Here are some ways I change it up:
Extra seasoning ideas:
You can use rosemary instead of Oregano to make a rosemary Italian bread. This is great with soups!
I often add a little garlic powder or fresh minced garlic to the butter and olive oil mixture to make a garlic bread version of this recipe. SO GOOD!
If you like a little heat (and it is not too much trust me), try adding a couple pinches of red pepper flakes to your olive oil and butter before brushing on top of the bread.
I hope you give this easy bread recipe a try and love it as much as we do!
Olive Oil and Parmesan Restaurant Style Bread
Ingredients
- 1 loaf of boule the roundish mound shaped bread - you can find this in your bakery section of your grocery store
- ⅛ cup of olive oil
- 1 tbsp of butter
- 1 tsp of dried oregano
- ½ tsp of salt
- ½ cup of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
- With a serrated knife, score your boule in a checkered pattern (vertically and horizontally) like in the picture. Make sure your cut the bread almost all the way down to the bottom, stopping before you get the bottom crust.
- Now, melt your butter in the microwave for about 5-10 seconds.
- When melted, add your olive oil to the butter.
- Now mix in your oregano and salt.
- With a pastry brush, brush on your olive oil mixture all over the bread even down the sides. Make sure to get all of the cut cracks as well.
- Now, sprinkle ½ of your Parmesan cheese all over the top of the bread.
- Next, take the other ½ of your cheese and sprinkle it along the cut areas of your bread.
- Now go ahead with your hands and pat the Parmesan cheese into the cracks and press it firmly on your olive oil mixture on the top.
- Bake your bread for about 10-15 minutes until all of the cheese has melted on the top.
Carmela says
Why not give measurements in grams instead of cup size.
Melissa says
I added the conversion for you on the recipe. Under ingredients you will see a tab for metric, just click that and it will convert it 🙂