Delicious Open-Faced Comfort by the Name of Croque-Montagnarde

What do you do with half of a leftover loaf of delicious millet flax bread from Lucia’s?

You steal a trick from Tartine that you saw in the January issue of Martha Stewart Living.

You slice it real thick. Slather it with béchamel sauce. Top it with smashed potatoes tossed in olive oil, ham, Gruyere, and fresh black pepper. You bake it. And then you thoroughly enjoy it.

Tartine is in San Fran and is known for its bread. I am going there next month and can barely stand waiting. Perfect that I got a little teaser in Martha Stewart Living this month. Baker at Tartine, Chad Robertson, provides a week’s worth of recipes using a loaf of bread when it’s at its freshest and when it’s a week old. In addition to the recipe they had for the Croque-Montagnarde that we had tonight, there are also recipes for Warm Winter Bread Salad (which we’ll be having tomorrow night, made of toasted chunks of bread, endive, radicchio, frisee, bacon, and an herb vinaigrette), Cinnamon Breadcrumb-Sprinkled Ice Cream, and Eggs in Red-Wine Sauce.

Robertson also provides the recipe for Tartine’s Country Bread, which I initially thought was quite generous. But, then I realized he put it in a code that few of us can decipher. Grams.

1,135 grams white bread flour…

100 grams water per feeding (78 degrees)…

Yea, right. I barely just figured out how to make challah using cups and teaspoons. I'll skip this gram stuff for now.

But that’s okay. I’m more than happy subbing in the delicious bread we do have access to in Mpls that I don't have to do all sorts of conversions for. From Lucia’s, from Rustica…

But I digress.

For this delicious open-faced comfort, thank you, Baker Chad.