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Is bread an appetizer or is it dinner? Rethinking a restaurant pacifier
When did bread become an appetizer? Nearly every sit-down restaurant plops a basket of bread on the table -- along with the water and usually before you’ve even ordered drinks. It's like a pacifier, only for adults. And before the real appetizers arrive, (the ones you’re paying for), the waiter will whisk that basket away.
Granted, if you’re like me, the bread basket is long empty. And my appetite is long gone. Great bread is just so hard to resist!
So I’m mulling over this idea of bread as a new restaurant “course” (the bread course, sort of like the cheese course or the salad course). And it makes me think about Alicia’s wonderful recipe for Stuffed Cheese Bread. It’s appetizer worthy for sure, but ya know what? I’d vote for making it a main “course.”
You wouldn’t want bread for dinner all the time, but if you’re like me and you’re going to indulge in bread (or bury your face in the basket is more like it), you might as well have some substantial, terrific bread. Think of a crusty yeast loaf oozing with Provolone and a marinara sauce for dipping. Sounds like dinner to me!
Related Recipes
Stuffed Cheese Bread
Refrigerated dough is the secret to making this rich and yummy appetizer bread fast, too!
Read full recipe.
Stuffed Olive Bread
Just as with pizza, the possibilities are endless with stuffed breads.
Read full recipe.
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Comments
“Is bread an appetizer or is it dinner?“
For me, it’s just a nutritional disaster that quickly becomes a thousand-calorie pre-meal binge. When I’m dining alone, I ask the wait-staff to not bring me any bread.
When I’m dining with friends, I can’t tell the wait-staff to not bring any bread to the table, so I succumb to the temptation.
The solution is obvious.
I have to get rid of my friends.
Jim Purdy.
I agree about restaurant bread, I find myself eating even tasteless bread because it is there, I am hungry and well, I’m a grazer. I have started asking what kind of bread they bring and sometimes saying no thank you. Why fill up on dried out baguette only because they set it before you?
However, home baked bread pulled apart, oozing with cheese and nibbled on as an afternoon snack with a glass of wine…oh yeah! When I spend weekends in the mountains with my brother and sister in law, we often find ourselves nibbling and snacking and skipping dinner. It’s a lovely way to spend a weekend, but we don’t indulge like that everyday or our waist lines would surely show it!