Baked Brie

In college, I studied abroad in Lyon, France for 5 months, and the one thing I loved more than anything else in France was their food: fresh bread all the time, delicious cheeses, great wine, and much more. One cheese I really developed a taste for was brie. So when I saw the package of Brie at the store, I couldn't resist. But I figured, what better way to eat brie than by trying out a new recipe. I recently tried a caterer's baked brie for the first time and loved it, so I wanted to try it out myself.

Ingredients
1 wheel of brie (as in the picture above)
1 package crescent dinner rolls or 1 large sheet puff pastry dough
Strawberry, raspberry, or apricot jam
Brown sugar
Syrup 


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°

2. Lightly spray a non-stick cookie sheet with cooking spray and spread out half the sheet of crescent rolls (do not separate individual rolls) or puff pasty dough. 
3. Spread a thin layer of jam on the dough. Then place the cheese in the center of the dough (the rind is perfectly fine, do not worry about leaving it on)
4. If using crescent dinner roll dough, spread the other half with jam and lay, jam-side down, on top of cheese. 
5. Fold dough together and over the cheese, cutting off any excess dough.
6. Drizzle maple syrup and sprinkle brown sugar on top of pastry to give it a nice glaze. 

 7. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes until pastry is golden brown. Allow pastry to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. 

Serve with crackers and apple slices. 

Emily's Thoughts

I found a couple different recipes for this. Instead of using syrup and brown sugar on top, you can use 1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tsp of water and brush the entire pastry with that before baking for a glaze. 

As you can see from my pictures, I had a little too much dough around the edges, so I highly recommend cutting off at least the corners of the crescent roll dough (this was what I used) to reduce the amount of breading. 

Also consider serving this with a red wine. The mix of the cheese and the wine would be a delicious combination. 

Recipe adapted from Simply Recipes and the President cheese wrapper.