Bread Salad

There are a million recipes out there for bread salad, so you will probably end up playing with this one to make it suit your tastes. This recipe was originally designed for using up stale bread, but it is also great if you have a tomato overflow.

* 1/2 loaf stale italian or french bread, cut into cubes (you can use fresh bread, but you will need to toast it first)
* a couple of big super ripe tomatoes, cut into cubes & salted (I like to seed them first, but most people just cut 'em up and toss 'em in, seeds and all)
* Vidalia or sweet onion, sliced very thin (again, add to taste. I'm not a huge fan of raw onion, so I only add about 1/4 of a medium sized one. Some people might add up to a whole onion if they dig it.)
* a handful of fresh basil
* Salt and pepper to taste (I only use sea salt and fresh ground pepper these days. It makes a huge taste difference)
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* half of a 1/4 cup red wine vinegar (I'll explain later...)
* 1 small clove garlic, minced

So this is pretty easy. Just throw your bread, tomatoes, and onion together in a big bowl and set aside.

Lets start on the dressing, because this is where it can get weird. Whisk the vinegar, olive oil, & garlic together in a small bowl. Now, in my opinion this amount of dressing is way too much for the amount of salad we have made. I recommend that you add 1/2 of the amount of dressing here, toss first, then taste. With the dressing all you want to really remember is this: 2 parts olive oil to 1 part vinegar, then add garlic. You can add as much or as little dressing as you like. I find that too much really overpowers the salad.

When you figure out your dressing, pour it over the bread salad, toss, and let sit (room temp) for 30 minutes. I like to toss a few times during that 1/2 hour. This allows the salad to sop up all that good dressing. After 30 minutes, add basil, salt & pepper to taste, toss & serve.

Notes:
This salad does NOT keep well in the fridge overnight as the bread becomes soggy. Just make what you need for each day.
Bread: My favorite bread to make this with is ciabatta or tuscan. An old baguette works great too, but you might want to cube it the day before, because cutting a day old baguette is nearly impossible. I don't recommend using pre-sliced sandwich bread for this recipe, but if you try it and it works, let me know your secret.
Feel free to add anything else you like to the salad: olives, capers, anchovies, etc.

Great paired with: a cheese plate, mixed grilled meats, appetizers.