Bread Salad

This wonderful salad I learned from my wonderful sister in law.  When she first mentioned "bread salad" I thought, "ew gross.  Who wants soggy bread mushed together with other obviously nasty things?  Because only nasty things belong in bread salad."  Oh how wrong I was.

Think about when you go to a nice Italian place, and they give you some crusty bread to dip in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  This is kind of like that only a lot better.

This is a bit of a tricky dish.  Not because it's difficult, but there are several tricks that make it great.  And that's why I'm here.

Start with a crusty baguette.  Cut it up into bite sized pieces.  I'm only feeding me and Miyagi so half a salad is plenty for the two of us.  If you want to make more (and you will) the ratios are easy.  You'll need one package of each main ingredient, then some seasonings.

Trick #1: The bread needs to be really crusty.  This can be accomplished by cutting it up in the morning and leaving it out all day.  Or, in a fix, you can spread the chunks on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven at about 200° for maybe 5-7 minutes.

The crustiness is what keeps the bread from turning into that soggy mess we all fear so much.

Trick #2: Use fresh mozzarella.  You can usually find this in the fancy cheese section of your store.  Cut it into medium sized chunks.  The kind I had was just big enough to cut each ball in half.  Again, we used half a package for two of us.

[Now imagine there's a picture of me doing the same thing but with grape tomatoes.  Cut in half, put in bowl.  Easy!]

Trick #3 Use fresh basil.  Do you see a pattern here?  This is possibly the most important because dried basil just doesn't have enough flavor.



Grab a few leaves and tear or slice them up.

The smell at this moment will remind you why you need to make this salad every day.

Now put everything in a bowl together and marvel at how beautiful it is.

Take some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and lightly drizzle it throughout the salad.  Salt and pepper generously and you're done!

Trick #4: Go light on the drizzling.  The flavor you're really looking for is the subtle combination of the main ingredients.  The olive oil, and vinegar and just to enhance the flavors but they can overpower everything if you use too much.

Trick #5: Use white balsamic vinegar. This is less of a trick than a tip.  As you can see the brown vinegar kind of turns everything else brown.  Miyagi and I are ok with that.  But if you're feeding this to anyone else consider buying some white balsamic vinegar.  It's a bit more expensive but it makes the dish much prettier.

And as we all know, prettier tastes better.