Traditional Italian Sausage Stuffing

Ok I usually steer away from recipes without reviews but I was taking a chance on this cause it sounded good!! Although it was really good it needed a little fixing up. I cut the recipe in half cause it was just myself & husband. I bought a rosemary olive oil loaf of focaccia bread & it added wonderful flavor! I also bought Jones breakfast sausage (I thought the recipe called for breakfast sausage when I was shopping & couldn't find Johnsonville brand so just grabbed my regualr favorite until I realized it was suppose to be italian sausage, my mistake but it was really good so I will stick to Jones breakfast from now on!) I left out the green peppers, tomatoes & olives we don't care for them, but did add a handfull of craisins which added a great sweetness to the stuffing! Then I opted for the white wine instead of water! It smelt wonderful before I even put it in the oven! However the stuffing was still dry & crunchy when it was done....so my only complaint was that it needed more liquid. But it was my 1st time making stuffing so i didn't want to add more liquid in case it made it soggy....but now I know if it looks like I need it add it before you bake it! It was still good just very, crunchy! Overall tasted great! I'm making this for my 1st thanksgiving dinner with the changes :-)

In my personal recipe book, I labeled this as "Pizza Thanksgiving Stuffing" because it tastes exactly like sausage pizza! (And I made it for Thanksgiving.) It's got the bread, like pizza crust, cheese, tomatoes like sauce and sausage. All the makings of a pizza! And that's exactly what it tasted like, a pizza casserole. Here are my tips: Do not double the recipe. I did this because I was making for 13+ people, and didn't think one batch would be enough. Trust me. It is. Nearly everyone had some and some even had seconds. Some even took some home. There was more than enough. Probably because there were so many other dishes, everyone got filled up. I got a lot of rave reviews though, and one of the kids said they normally hated stuffing but liked mine. I omitted the olives, because I thought it sounded weird, and didn't want to offend picky eaters, however in retrospect, olives, especially black ones, would probably have worked. Sun dried tomatoes are delicious and a must, as are fresh basil. I used water, since I didn't have wine, but I am sure wine would be good too. Definitely do the shredded parmesan, because it melts much better than the grated kind. I could not find focaccia bread in my grocery store, so I had to sub with an everything loaf and a cheese focaccia bread. Were still phenomenal and I would highly recommend the everything loaf! I used 2 diff kinds of sausage and both were good! All in all, really good if you like pizza and especially for kids!

I actually found this recipe when I was clipping my coupons. My husband thought it sounded good so we thought we would try it out before Thanksgiving to see if it would be good enough for the big day. Everyone liked it so we decided that we would do this instead of our usual cornbread/bread mixed stuffing. The Italian sausage and the garlic bread add flavors that I don't typically utilize for Thanksgiving but it works well. We had it with roasted chicken but I'm sure it will be fine with turkey. It was also great heated up the next day.