Bread for Dinner Recipes

Embracing Bread for Dinner: Simple Ideas and Culinary Inspiration

Crafting this newsletter fluctuates in ease from week to week. Inspiration disregards schedules. Often, ideas strike during commutes, leading to quick paragraph drafts in a notes application, or in the shower, prompting a dash for a phone on the sink to dictate voice memos brimming with culinary thoughts, perhaps about pesto, amidst the bathroom ambiance.

Other weeks present a challenge to assemble content, often relying on seasonal shifts for direction. One Monday, I sent my editor, Mia, a series of hesitant messages. “Perhaps frozen peas?”

Once I resolved to write about springtime produce like peas and asparagus, words escaped me. I appreciate both ingredients! However, the desire to consume peas and asparagus is absent at the moment, even with April’s arrival. Bread for dinner is appealing. This concept, while unconventional for a newsletter titled “The Veggie,” became a motivating challenge.

Should you also favor bread for dinner, be it from fatigue, lack of inspiration, or perhaps marathon training, know that it’s perfectly acceptable and achievable with a sense of virtue often associated with a bowl of vegetables. Consider Lidey Heuck’s chopped salad featuring chickpeas, feta, and avocado. While undeniably green with lettuce, diced cucumber, green olives, scallions, capers, and herbs (dill, basil, mint, or parsley), it also acts as a welcome option when craving carbohydrates, a foundation for crispy, olive oil-coated croutons.

Chopped Salad with Chickpeas, Feta, and Avocado

For recipe details, view here.

Bread salad serves as an excellent solution for using leftover bread, be it stale bread heels, hot dog buns, pita, lavash, or even day-old bagels. Revitalize any of these by baking them into croutons for Naz Deravian’s vibrant dooymaaj salad, Hetty Lui McKinnon’s spiced chickpea salad with tahini, Yotam Ottolenghi’s chopped salad with everything bagel croutons, Lidey’s taverna salad, or a classic fattoush like Joan Nathan’s adaptation of Ramzi Osseiran’s recipe.

Dips provide a fantastic rationale for enjoying bread for dinner, though justification is hardly necessary. Carolina Gelen’s smoky spiced eggplant dip? Yotam Ottolenghi’s butter bean dip with frizzled onions and preserved lemon? Yossy Arefi’s protein-rich herby cottage cheese dip? All are perfect served with ample bread.

Pizzas and flatbreads stand out as consistently satisfying bread-centric dinners. Reserve Ali Slagle’s creamed kale pizza for times when you have more energy, and Dawn Perry’s pesto and mozzarella French bread pizza or Ali Slagle’s smoked Gouda and broccoli flatbreads for simpler, relaxed evenings.

Bonus Tip: Melissa Clark’s Garlic Croutons

I have the pleasure of working near Melissa Clark at The New York Times office, and we recently discussed bread for dinner. “Ooh, ooh, ooh, can I share my crouton method?” she inquired. Gaining culinary insights from Melissa is a delightful perk of an open office environment.

Here are her crouton instructions: Crush cloves of peeled garlic and tear pieces of day-old bread – “Using old bread is essential” – and place them in a pan with enough olive oil to cover the base. “Crucially — use low heat.” Sauté the bread and garlic until golden brown and crisp, approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Melissa then seasons with salt and Parmesan, “creating a frico-like crust overall.” Occasionally, she includes red pepper flakes or a sprig of rosemary. Importantly: “You must eat the garlic.”

Sometimes, embracing bread-for-dinner fully, she serves these croutons in a bowl alongside olives as dinner. “Do we really need a salad?” she remarked with a laugh.

Thank you for reading, and until next week!

Contact us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. For account inquiries, please reach out to our colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com.