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Baked brie is a soft cheese heated in the oven, often wrapped in pastry dough and served with bread, crackers, or fruit. It can be sweet or savory, with ingredients like honey, fruit, onions, or olives. The rind is edible but some don’t like the texture or flavor.
Baked brie in its simplest form is a wheel of soft cheese that has been heated in the oven until soft and runny. Brie can be baked in its crust only, or it can be wrapped in phyllo dough or some other type of pastry crust. The flavor of baked brie can be enhanced by adding nuts, chutneys, honey, or other ingredients that won’t overwhelm the cheese. When served, baked brie is usually accompanied by slices of baguette, crackers, or fruit wedges, because the nearly liquid cheese requires a tool to transport it from plate to mouth.
Making baked brie is an incredibly easy process. All it takes is placing a wheel of brie in an oven for 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the wheel. Although the rind, the hard casing around the cheese, is sometimes able to hold the cheese in place as it cooks, sometimes it breaks down, meaning brie should always be cooked in a buttered or greased dish. Wrapping the wheel of brie in pastry dough can solve the problem of brie leaking all over the oven while also providing a crunchy contrast to the soft cheese inside. A more dramatic presentation involves placing the brie in the center of a hollowed out, usually round, loaf with the top of the rind cut off and then serving the cheese warm in the bread bowl.
Many recipes for baked brie emphasize the sweetness of the cheese or the savory aspects of it. For a sweet dish, it’s popular to bake brie with a generous amount of honey on top. Some fruits can also be cooked with brie and will melt into the cheese as it cooks. Fruits such as black cherries, cranberries, apples, pears and raspberries are all effective choices. Brown sugar can also be sprinkled on brie to create a caramel-like coating.
Baked brie savory recipes may include cooked onions or included olives. Spinach can be placed in a bread bowl with brie to make a warm and hearty appetizer. Dips and sauces, such as jams that contain chiles or vegetable chutneys, can help bring out the more subtle flavors of the cooked cheese.
An often debated point about baked brie is whether to eat the rind that surrounds the cheese. It is edible and some people consider it one of the most pleasant parts of eating. Others don’t like to eat the peel, because they don’t like the texture or don’t like its difference in flavor from the brie. Some mass-produced cheeses actually use pasteurized milk to make the brie, which means the flavors that would normally develop in the rind aren’t present. In these cases, the crust can be very bland, even when baked.
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