Grilled Bread Salad

Everyone loves bread salad, which—traditionally at least—was most often made with stale bread. You can wait around for bread to get stale, but really the best way to ready bread for salad is to use the grill or broiler to quickly dry the bread while charring the edges slightly, adding another dimension of flavor to the salad. But watch the bread carefully as you grill or broil it; a slight char is good, but it’s a short step from toast to burned bread. The time you allow the bread to soften after tossing it with the seasonings varies; keep tasting until the texture pleases you. If your tomatoes are on the dry side, you might add a little extra liquid in the form of more olive oil and lemon juice or a light sprinkling of water. Because it’s juicy, almost saucy, and pleasantly acidic, this salad makes a nice accompaniment to simple grilled meat or poultry and has a special affinity for dark fish such as tuna and swordfish.