CSA Week 7: Bread Salad for Summer Nights

Cassius and Roxy with this week’s CSA share

Today I picked up my seventh – very fragrant – produce CSA share from Sol to Seed Farm.  The box represents what’s in season here in western Washington in early August, including:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Broccoli
• Cucumbers
• Summer Squash
• Cabbage
• Salad Mix
• Onions
• Basil
• and a free, sliced loaf of The Goldendale Wheat loaf from Grand Central Baking Co.

I still had some leftover parsley, cucumbers and crusty bread stored in the refrigerator from last week’s share.  Inspired by Chef Cesare Casella who prepared a Tuscan Bread Salad with beans on PBS’s Martha Stewart’s Cooking School, I decided to shun the oven again and make bread salad with ingredients I already had on-hand.  It’s still too hot to turn on the oven, so this recipe worked out perfectly for a light dinner.  It also used up the remaining parsley, bread and cucumbers from last week, cherry tomatoes I picked from my own garden today, and the very fragrant basil in today’s box.  Here’s what I did:

Bread Salad

Bread Salad

• 4-5 slices crusty bread, cubed (rustic sourdough is what I had)
• 6-7 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• 1 cucumber, peeled, cut in half, seeds removed and sliced
• 1/2 clove garlic, peeled and minced (you can also use purple onion or shallot)
• a small fistful each of fresh flat-leaf parsley and basil, torn by hand into pieces
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar (or white wine if that’s what you have)
• 2/3 cup good olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup cooked beans (garbanzo is what I had)

Preheat an oven to 325 degrees. Cut days-old bread into cubes and arrange on a baking sheet, and toast until the bread is dry but not browned. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

In large mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients and toss until combined. Let stand for at least 30 minutes or more at room temperature before serving. The toasted bread cubes will still have some crunch.

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