Fabulous Bread Salad (with Goat Cheese, Tomato and Basil)

Two background stories: #1 We love our good bread and our bakery of choice is Purebread Bakery in Surrey Hills. They do the best bread in my humble opinion. Our top favourites are the corn sourdough and the cheese & onion sourdough. And yes, I have tried many of the famous Melbourne bakeries. Hope Farm is a close second but they only sell their bread at farmers’ market. Anyway, digressing. #2 One of my favourite Spring/Summer breakfast is a bruschetta made from the above mention sourdough bread with diced ripe tomato and fresh basil with a little bit of standard balsamic dressing.

So one Sunday afternoon I came home from shopping to find that Josh had made us lunch, which was a surprise in itself (he cooks but rarely without my prompting) but what was even more special was that he invented a whole new salad with the ingredients that were lying around the house that needed to be used up! And guess what? It was absolutely delicious. He said he was inspired by my breakfast bruschetta and he wanted to try to recreate a salad version from it. And not only those, he took photos! Have I mentioned I love this man and that he is a perfect food blogger’s spouse?

Big Salad Lunch for Two

1. 3 thick slices (1″) of corn sourdough bread, cut into cubes *
2. 3 nicely ripe sweet tomatoes**
3. 50 g of goat cheese ***
4. 6 fresh basil leaves, torn

Standard Dressing (Balsamic Vinegar & Olive oil)

1. 1 part good grassy olive oil (I use Nicholas Estate)
2. 1 part good balsamic vinegar (I use whatever I get at the supermarket, I’m not that fussy about balsamic vinegar. Although I have been advised by various authors to buy balsamic vinegar from Modena only, which I comply)
3. salt & pepper

Mix together. I also have a bottle on hand of this standard dressing on hand. It’s one of our favourite condiments.

Toast the bread cubes light under the grill for a few minutes until they are crisp, turn them over half way through (the time it takes depends on your grill so just keep checking every minute or so). Toss the herbs through the tomatoes. Add goat cheese and bread. Toss well to combine. To serve, dress with about a tablespoon of the standard dressing. If preferred, drizzle a little more olive oil through.

* Yep I am well aware that you may not live near Surrey Hills in Melbourne but try to get your hands on a good loaf of nicely dense sourdough bread. I have used other Purebread bread successfully.

** Truss tomatoes are from the supermarket are actually quite all right once you leave them to ripen properly. Gourmet tomatoes are just useless.

*** I use Tarago River’s marinated goat cheese here because I get them 2kg at a time but feel free to try other soft goat cheese.