Simple Homemade Garlic & Herb Chicken Bake

Nothing beats making your own chicken bake on a Saturday afternoon (or early morning...)!

All day at work yesterday all I could think about was what my next food project will be... originally I was thinking of garlic cheese bread and because laziness run quite deep with me, I'd had been thinking of a way to avoid having to deal with making my own bread... which I'd love to do but just not right now. Many people opted for Pillsbury dough...which I went to go check out but after glancing at the ingredient list... that pretty much drove me away from that option...what is with all that partially hydrogenated crap??

Nutrition/Food Science FYI: Anything that says partially hydrogenated anything oil equals trans fat even though the package says zero grams. That only means the trans fat isn't large enough to make it onto the package but it's still there. If you think about it, 0.4grams of trans fat technically is 0grams if you round (which most companies do) and that's only for one serving... well most packages of food we buy are rarely just one serving, so lets say its 8. Well 8 servings later 0.4 grams of trans fat x 8 servings and now its 3.2 grams. Something most people don't think about... but I'm not here to preach, just stating some not so obvious facts.

I'm not a huge crazy health nut but being a food science and nutrition minor back in college has definitely has me being more aware of what I eat and what goes into the stuff I eat. Let's face it, I'm sure there's enough other kinds of fat floating in my body, let's not add onto it with even worst crap like trans fat and such...

Anyways back to how I came upon (or remembered) this wonderful Trader Joe's raw pizza dough. I was having lunch with my coworker and she whips outs this great looking slice of pizza and me being obsessed with food, I asked if she made it and of course we know where the rest of that conversation went. Having realized that, quickly after work, I drove to my local Trader's Joe and picked up a bag of that pre-made raw dough! Quickly scan ingredient list, passes and there we have it, ready made raw dough cuts my work in half!

They have 3 different types of dough (regular, whole wheat, and garlic & herb), I decided to use the garlic and herb thinking I was going to make garlic cheese bread... somehow along the way (and some personal difficulties with the dough) I decided to change that idea altogether... Garlic & Herb Chicken Bake became the new project which was great because I had a ton of left over chicken. One thing led to another and BAM here we are:

Garlic & Herb Chicken Bake (recipe here)