Chicken Parmesan Bake

Chicken Parmesan.  One of my favorite Italian dishes, and something I’ve tried to recreate at home many times.  Making it can be labor intensive, since you have to fry the chicken first, then cover it with sauce.  This recipe for Chicken Parmesan Bake has been popping up all over Pinterest, so I gave it a try.  The neat thing about this recipe is that the chicken is baked, not fried and garlicky croutons are used for the “crust”.  I love the Food Wishes Video Recipes blog.  I think seeing a video of a recipe being made is especially useful for those of you who need to SEE each step of the recipe and not just read it.  This tasted great!  The top of the croutons get crunchy and crispy and the bottom of the croutons soak up the marinara, cheese, and chicken juice and taste amazing!  (This does taste best the day it is made…the croutons don’t hold up well for leftovers the next day.)

Chicken Parmesan Bake

recipe from Food Wishes Video Recipes via Pinterest

I’ve written out the recipe steps below, but you can also just watch the video

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• hot red pepper flakes, to taste
• 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I used 3)
• 2 cups marinara sauce
• 1/4 cup chopped basil
• 8 ounces mozzarella, shredded
• 4 ounces parmesan, shredded
• 1 (5 ounce) package of garlic croutons

In a 9×13″ casserole dish, mix your olive oil, crushed garlic and red pepper flakes.  Spread this mixture out over the bottom of the dish.  Then put your chicken breasts down in the dish.  (Picky Apple Note: I pounded the chicken breasts out so that they were fairly thin…they cook faster this way too!)  Pour 2 cups of marinara sauce over the chicken breasts and spread to cover evenly.  Sprinkle the chopped basil over the sauce.  Then sprinkle 4 ounces of shredded mozzarella and 2 ounces of the shredded parmesan (half of the cheese) over the top.  Next sprinkle the 5 ounces of garlic croutons over the cheese.  Spread them out evenly.  (Picky Apple Note: I smashed mine up very slightly first).  Now sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the croutons (4 more ounces of mozzarella and 2 more ounces of parmesan).  Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes or until chicken is cooked through  (if you don’t pound out the chicken breasts or if they are particularly thick, it could take up to an hour.)