Garbage Bread

Garbage Bread is exactly what it sounds like — throw whatever you love into pizza dough, roll it up like a cinnamon roll, and bake it. This Bacon Cheeseburger version is our absolute favorite: cheesy, savory, and served with a classic burger sauce that takes it over the top. It’s not health food. It’s game-day food. And it delivers every single time.

Why You’ll Love It

Tastes like a Cheeseburger in bread form — all the flavors of bacon, beef, and melty cheese wrapped in a golden, crispy crust
Incredibly easy to make — brown the meat, melt the cheese, roll it up, bake it. That’s really it.
The Velveeta is non-negotiable — it creates that smooth, creamy, slider-style filling that no other cheese can replicate
Endlessly adaptable — swap the filling for buffalo Chicken, spinach artichoke dip, or anything else you love
Perfect for a crowd — slices up beautifully and disappears fast

Ingredient Notes

The bacon — I chop mine before I cook it because I find it easier to manage, though I’ve done it the other way and just broken it up after. About half a pound. I usually end up with a little more because I buy a full pound and eat some while I cook, which I realize undermines the whole recipe, but we’re all doing our best.
Ground beef — go lean if you want, 80/20 if you want something with more richness. I’ve made it both ways. The lean version is easier because there’s less grease to drain, which sounds boring but is actually practical.
Steak seasoning — I used McCormick the first time and I’ve stuck with it because why mess with something that works. Though I think I was a little heavier-handed with it this last time and it was, if anything, better.
Velveeta — twelve ounces. I cube it so it melts faster and more evenly. Do not feel shame about the Velveeta. It has a job to do and it does it well.
The pizza dough — I use the Pillsbury thin crust in the tube. I know there are people who would roll their eyes at that and I genuinely do not care. Life is short. The thin crust rolls out beautifully and bakes up with just the right amount of crisp on the outside.
Cheddar jack on top — this is the layer that goes over the meat before you roll it up. It adds another dimension of cheesiness that, combined with the Velveeta situation inside, creates something almost illegally satisfying.

Ingredients

½ pound chopped bacon (or a little more, let’s be honest)
1 cup chopped onion
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon steak seasoning — McCormick is what I use, though honestly any good one should work
12 ounces Velveeta, cubed
1 can (13.8 oz) Pillsbury thin crust pizza dough
About 1½ cups grated cheddar jack cheese — I eyeball this one

For the Sauce:

½ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons ketchup
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Start by preheating your oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment — don’t skip this, the cheese leakage is real and it will glue itself to a naked pan in ways that will test your patience.
Cook your bacon in a large skillet over medium-low heat until it’s nice and crispy. Remove it, set it aside, and drain most of the grease — I say “most” because I leave a little in there for the onions. That’s just the right thing to do.
Turn the heat up to medium-high, add your chopped onions and the ground beef, and cook until the meat is cooked through and the onions have gone soft and kind of translucent. This takes maybe eight to ten minutes. Drain off the extra liquid — there will be some. Then turn the heat down to low, add the bacon back in, add your steak seasoning, and then the Velveeta. Stir it constantly while the cheese melts in. It comes together fast once it starts going. You want it smooth and glossy. Pull the pan off the heat when it gets there.
Here’s the part where I always feel a little anxious — rolling out the pizza dough. I pull the dough out of the tube onto the parchment-lined baking sheet and stretch and press it out into a rectangle, roughly 15 by 10 inches. Mine is never perfectly even. One corner is always thicker than the other. This has never mattered to the final product.
Spread the meat mixture evenly over the dough, leaving about an inch around the edges. Then scatter the cheddar jack over the top of the meat. Now roll it up — starting from one of the long sides, just like a cinnamon roll. Tuck and roll, press the seam closed as best you can, and lay it seam-side down on the pan.
Bake it for fifteen to twenty minutes. You’re looking for golden brown. Mine usually hits the right color around seventeen minutes, but ovens are different creatures and you should keep an eye on it.
Let it sit for at least five minutes before you slice it — ideally ten. I know that’s hard. The smell is aggressive and wonderful and it will make everyone in the house wander into the kitchen with no real purpose. But if you cut it too soon it’ll fall apart and you’ll lose some of that filling, which is heartbreaking.
While it rests, whisk together the sauce — mayo, ketchup, salt, pepper. It’s essentially a burger sauce and it’s exactly the right thing to dip this into. Don’t overthink it.

Variations

The beauty of this recipe, and the reason it’s called Garbage Bread, is that you can really put almost anything in it. Buffalo chicken dip rolled up in pizza dough is genuinely wonderful. Spinach artichoke dip works. Leftover Spaghetti sounds absurd and I’m telling you it’s not. Even Crack Chicken, if you’ve made a big batch and you have extra — throw it in the dough, roll it up, bake it. You’ll be glad you did.
I’ve thought about a breakfast version. Scrambled eggs, cheese, Sausage. I haven’t done it yet but I think about it.

Storage and Reheating

If you have leftovers — and you might not, which is its own kind of problem — wrap them in foil and put them in the fridge. They reheat well in the oven at 350, maybe ten minutes or so. The microwave works in a pinch but the crust gets soft, which is less ideal. I’ve eaten it cold, standing at the counter, and I won’t apologize for that either.
It doesn’t keep more than a couple of days. Not because it goes bad necessarily, but because it keeps calling to you until it’s gone.

The sauce recipe makes more than you’d think you need and then somehow isn’t quite enough. I’m not sure how that works but it happens every time. Make a double batch and use it on burgers later in the week — it’s that same classic flavor and it keeps fine in the fridge.