Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread (Cheese, Spinach/Feta, and Bacon/Jalapeno)

It’s a wonderful time for cheese lovers. Cheesy Christmas music is playing everywhere, Cheeseheads can purchase shares of the NFL champion Green Bay Packers, and Domino’s recently introduced their new Stuffed Cheesy Breads. While watching another Packers victory as well as the 60 Minutes segment on Michael Bublé’s Christmas special, my roommates and I decided to make it 3-for-3 on the cheesiness for the day and ordered all three Stuffed Cheesy Breads varieties: Spinach/Feta, Bacon/Jalapeno, and Cheese only.

The Stuffed Cheesy Breads looked like big calzones with garlic and cheese seasoning on top. One order had eight pieces, with each piece weighing in at 140-160 calories. Normally we’d be concerned about such high caloric intake, but since it took us so much energy to sit on the couch in our underwear and watch football that day, we felt completely justified in carbo-loading before the rigorous evening TV lineup. I had expected the orders to come with marinara sauce, and I was disappointed to find out that wasn’t the case. But sometimes life throws you curveballs, and all you can do is roll with the punches and mix your sports metaphors, so we dove right in sans dipping sauces.

Domino’s claims each Stuffed Cheesy Bread contains as much cheese as their medium pizza. The pieces on the ends, then, were akin to the pizza crust, as no cheese was actually inside the two end pieces. The remaining six pieces really were quite cheesy. The gooey mozzarella and cheddar mix on the inside played well with the different texture and taste of the crusty Romano cheese seasoning on the outside. Similarly, the top of the bread had an appropriate amount of crunch, while the inside was soft and doughy (though occasionally too doughy). The bottom of some pieces got to be a bit soggy and grew soggier as we slowly made our way through each Stuffed Cheesy Bread.

The Cheese Only one was fine but quickly became boring, especially in the absence of any dipping sauces. I won’t ever order it again if only because the other two varieties were clearly tastier. The Spinach/Feta Stuffed Cheesy Bread contained a reasonable amount of both titular ingredients, and the sharp, salty tanginess of the feta really shined. I only wish the feta had been spread more evenly throughout the order. The Bacon/Jalapeno one had a hefty amount of both ingredients, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bacon came in actual strips and the jalapeño came in whole slices that gave the Cheesy Bread a real spicy heat. I suppose I don’t have any Bacon/Jalapeno-specific complaints, unless you count the fact that Domino’s doesn’t use a tilde in their spelling of jalapeño (in which case, you and I would probably make great friends, but possibly only because you’ve driven away all your other friends with your grammatical nitpicking).

One final thought: This might sound silly to a lot of you, but it kind of bothers me not to know what role these Stuffed Cheesy Breads should play in a meal. Is it a side dish or is it a main dish? Breadsticks are clearly appetizers, but ordering bread stuffed with the cheese of a medium pizza to serve as the appetizer to an actual pizza feels like a convenient semantic loophole for fat people to exploit. (Note: I may be one of these fat people.) If you don’t particularly care about the identity crises of your foods, just go out and get cheesy this December. Take a Lactaid supplement, turn up the Michael Bublé Christmas album, and order a couple Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Breads.