Crispy Baked Chicken Roll

Here's the recipe.

Here's the finished product:

Stupid quarantine, am I right? So I'm cooking a lot, since we're only shopping weekly and avoiding takeout (though not completely, we're not animals). It gives me something to do that's not baking, and helps me stay sane. I miss taking pictures and posting, so we're moving on to more savory, less bakery dishes. Hopefully it's still interesting.

On Sundays, I like to try something a little more difficult, since husband is around to watch baby earlier than 5 PM. Last week I made a ratatouille which involved a lot of chopping, assembling, and baking. I was really proud of it, so I'm going to show it to you:

This time, I did a somewhat complicated chicken roll. It was delicious, but not pretty. Of course the roll exploded. I mean, I guess that's all that really went wrong. I had to bake it a bit longer too, maybe the chicken was too thick? The sauce was super easy, just put everything in the pot. The whole thing took about 4 hours to do, though that included an hour of refrigeration. In the end, it tasted really good, but I doubt we'll make it again, it's super difficult and unwieldy to deal with the chicken roll, and also really bad for you.

Sauteing the bacon, onions, and later spinach for the filling.

Smashing the chicken (with a rolling pin) and laying it out for the insides.

Adding the ham and swiss. I also forgot to salt and pepper the chicken so I put it on the ham and swiss. Worked fine.

Adding the bacon, onion, and spinach saute.

Finished chicken roll, ready for refrigeration. About 2 feet long.

This is where things went wrong. I had to pick up the chicken roll, and roll to coat it on these three trays, flour, egg, and panko. As soon as I picked the chicken roll up, it started to fall apart. The chicken was too thin in some places from smashing, and those were the first to go. It split in other areas.