Need an easy and delicious appetizer for your next party? Look no further than James Beard’s stuffed bread.
It sounds “kneady,” but this crowd-pleasing start to a summer barbecue couldn’t be easier to make. And to prove it, we tried out two recipes from Beard’s Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery (available on Amazon, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble): onion and cheese bread, and bacon and peanut butter appetizer.
Full disclosure: The original recipe for the bacon and peanut butter appetizer is breadless, calling for rolls of bacon spread with peanut butter, fastened, and grilled. We thought this might get a bit messy, so we took this one step further and used it as a bread filling instead.
- Slice a loaf of French bread into thick slices but don’t cut all the way through to the bottom, leaving the loaf intact.
- Cut an onion into very thin slices. You can also use cooked or already-caramelized onions if you prefer. Cut a block of cheese into thin slices or use shredded cheese. (We chose a nutty Gruyere for our loaf.)
- Insert a cheese slice and some onions into each cut in the loaf.
- Wrap the loaf in foil and grill. Check back after 10 minutes and continue to heat as needed.
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- Follow step 1 above.
- Spread peanut butter on the insides of the cut parts of the loaf, then insert a slice of bacon in each cut.
- Wrap and grill as above.
- Pro tip: Make it an Elvis! Tuck in some sliced bananas, too.
We devoured these appetizer while sipping Abraxas from Sonoma.
