Stuffed Braided Bread

Recently, inspired by various blogs I frequent, I have started baking breads. I find it very relaxing working with yeasted dough, kneading it, watching it swell, punching it etc. And the aroma of freshly baked bread is so heavenly.
I started with Pumpkin Bread that I have blogged about earlier. It has become a fall favorite in my kitchen.
I've made wonderful Zucchini Bread from Chef in You and Plain Flour and Whole Wheat Pav (Dinner Rolls) from Chef in You.
Getting a little more daring, I made Buns with Potato - Paneer Stuffing from Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen. Infact I made these for one of our Diwali potlucks where the hostess had a bread theme this year. They created a wow factor and went down very well with every one - young and not-so-young.
I have even made a Braided Bread with Mushroom stuffing from Super Yummy Recipes. Recently I saw another Braided Bread with Pizza style stuffing on Pari's Foodelicious.
I instantly decided to try it.
I had 1/2 a bottle of tomato and basil pasta sauce sitting in my fridge that needed to be finished before our upcoming Mumbai visit. So for the pizza-style stuffing for my bread, I cooked this down till thickened, it took over an hour on medium low heat. For the topping I used onions, colored peppers and shredded mozarella cheese.
For the bread recipe, I actually followed the Stuffed Buns recipe from Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen as it worked so well for me earlier.
For the stuffing, my inspiration was ofcourse Pari.
And for the idea of making a stuffed braided bread, I'd give the credit to Satya.

This Pizza style Stuffed Briaded Bread actually fit in great in my Thanksgiving menu. This year I had determined to try some of the traditional dishes cooked at this time. So instead of stuffed turkey, it was this pizza style Stuffed Braided Bread on my vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner table!

This pizza style Stuffed Braided Bread also goes to Nupur's Holiday Buffet table for the BB9 event.

I also made green beans casserole - could not believe how easy it was to make - just mixed lightly steamed grean beans with mushroom soup, fried onions, seasonings - salt, pepper, pinch of nutmeg, topped wth more fried onions and baked at 400F for 15 mins. - turned out so delicious and was polished off along with the bread.
Made a mashed potatoes dish also, from a recipe I had cut out long back from my newspaper. I'll leave you with a picture of these items.