Baked Italian Bread with Tomatoes, Basil, and Provolone Cheese

Baked Italian Bread with Cheese, Basil, and Tomatoes

Ingredients:

2 or 3 tomatoes

1/2 a loaf of Italian bread, or any loaf of unsliced bread

4 slices of the cheese of your choice (We chose provolone)

Fresh Basil

Directions:

Any round loaf will do for this recipe.

1) Cut your loaf in half, then slice it down the middle like so (We chose to use half the loaf to feed two people, and save the rest of the loaf for another date):

Slice the Bread in the middle open faced.

2) Slice your tomatoes thinly. Use a bread knife with a serrated blade instead of a straight blade. A serrated knife will cut a tomato better, while a straight blade will squash your tomato (unless it is really ripe). Layer the tomatoes onto the bread.

Line the thinly sliced tomatoes on the loaf.

3)  Here’s where we learned our lesson-The first time we made this, we put the cheese on and then the basil. Instead, put the freshly cut basil under your cheese and not on top like we did. This will keep your basil from browning so heavily in the oven.

This was also a great idea from Muffin, since we got to use our overly populated basil from our garden.

Line your loaf with tomatoes, then basil, then cheese to keep the basil from burning like ours did.

4) We toasted our bread in the toaster oven on the “toast” setting until it looked like the cheese was nice and melted. You can do it in the oven, and just keep an eye on it like we did.

Keep an eye on your bread to make sure you don’t burn it.

5) Enjoy!

This recipe comes from our friend Muffin. Thanks for such as tasty dish, Muffin!

*Muffin suggests trying it on a tortilla as well. She likes it better served that way.