Welcome to another Toasted Tuesday, where we elevate simple toast to extraordinary levels! Today, I’m taking inspiration from Mediterranean cuisine with a toasted treat that’s flavorful and beautiful. Mediterranean Burrata Fried Toast transforms everyday ingredients into a crave-worthy open-faced sandwich. Crispy, olive oil-fried bread forms the perfect base for layers of creamy pesto, savory prosciutto, and a vibrant tomato salad with olives and fresh herbs, all crowned with a sumptuous ball of creamy, fresh burrata. It’s toast that’s anything but ordinary!
What makes this fried toast so special?
With its layers of flavors and textures, I love this fried toast for its fresh, Mediterranean influence: fresh cherry tomatoes, bright and briny olives, loads of pesto and herbs, and smooth and creamy burrata.
It’s totally summer on a slice of bread. I created this fried toast at the end of winter, when my brain is filled with tantalizing dreams of homegrown herbs and vegetables. Especially tomatoes. Sweet cherry tomatoes make frequent appearances on my fried toast creations, including Avocado Fried Toast and Cherry Tomato Bruschetta. So if it’s spring (and it is at the time of this writing), I must be thinking about cherry tomatoes lol.
Hopefully, I’m not alone in thinking this, but olives are almost a seasoning themselves, as bold as salt, pepper, basil, or paprika. They add a beautiful briny, almost tart accent to any dish and pair perfectly with tomatoes.
I think that of all my fried toast creations so far, this one is probably the most flavor-balanced: Herbal, savory, sweet, acidic, briny, creamy. It’s an open-faced sandwich that has it all!
Ingredients and Substitution Notes
Bread — I prefer sourdough bread for my fried toast, although whole-grain wheat or multigrain bread are also delicious. I generally use bakery bread, as the bread is larger, and I can slice it as thickly as I want. I would advise against the regular, squarish, squooshy-soft sandwich bread that you find in the packaged bread aisle. It will work, but the goal of fried toast is to create a substantial single-slice sandwich and a side dish worthy of soup or salad. You won’t regret a big slice of toast!
Why fried? Counterintuitively, frying bread in a little olive oil actually strengthens it and gives it a crispy structure that’s somewhere between a crusty, teeth-jarring baguette and regular saw-dusty dry toaster toast. Fried bread can support an alarming amount of toppings and still be bite-through-able … and that’s just what we want here. More fillings, less bread!
Creamy pesto — I made a quick creamy pesto using cottage cheese and jarred basil pesto. Low-fat cottage cheese is high in protein and whips up into a smooth but thick and creamy sauce. You can definitely use homemade pesto, but I often just reach for the store-bought jar in recipes where the pesto will be mixed with other things.
Quick tip: You can avoid cleaning a food processor by buying whipped cottage cheese and then just whisking the pesto into it. It will be slightly lumpy with the pesto but you won’t really notice it. The food processor I have, shown in the how-to photo below, is this food chopper, which I love. It stores easily and cleans easily, and is the perfect size for making sauces, dressing, and small vegetable chops. My huge 9-cup food processor sits unused most of the year.
Prosciutto — Prosciutto is probably my favorite cured meat, with its smoky, salty, delicately savory flavor. It often comes packaged in big, thin slices, and is ready to eat. If you can’t find prosciutto, speck is a near-twin substitute, as is capicola. You could also use a mild salami. Personally, I think bacon would completely overwhelm the other flavors on this Mediterranean Burrata Fried Toast, but if that’s your thing, go for it!
Tomato and Olive salad — Tomatoes and olives go together beautifully, both flavor and texture-wise. In the summer, I’m always looking for ways to use up my abundance of homegrown cherry tomatoes, and sandwiches and salads are the easy targets. My go-to is always cherry tomatoes, as they’re sweeter than their globe counterparts.
For olives, I’m super partial to castelvetrano olives, which are mild and buttery. But I really haven’t found an olive yet that doesn’t work. In the photos here, I used a Greek mix of green and kalamata olives. This salad is easy-peasy, with just chopped tomatoes and olives tossed together with fresh herbs, extra virgin olive oil, and a hint of balsamic vinegar.
Burrata — My heart-tummy affair with burrata continues strong. The brilliance of a ball of soft mozzarella cheese stuffed with stracciatella and clotted cream is :chef’s kiss:. It makes a leveled-up Caprese salad, for sure, but is also the perfect topping on open-faced sandwiches.
My grocery store carries a few varieties of burrata, including a tub with four mini balls instead of one huge one (from the BelGioioso brand). All of the photos in my fried toast series that call for burrata use these mini balls. Note that they’re not actually that “mini” — just one covers a 6″ slice of toast! I appreciate the calorie savings over using a whole burrata ball. Because, let’s face it: I’d eat the whole thing myself.
If you can’t find burrata, use a quality soft mozzarella (either a ball or a log), slice it, and shingle the slices across the top of the bread.
Pistachios — The crunch of pistachios is a very welcome textural contrast on this sandwich. And they’re so pretty, with all the bright green. Note that if that green is important to you, buy pistachios still in the shell. Raw or roasted, doesn’t matter.
I have yet to find a pre-shelled brand where the pistachios aren’t roasted and brown through and through. They’re still delicious, but I’m guessing the shells give added protection during roasting and preserve that green interior color. YMMV.
How to Make Mediterranean Burrata Fried Toast
The instructions here, with photos, and in the recipe card below are for one fried toast, so that you can make it for your own lunch. But, it’s also easily scaled up for multiple servings. Don’t forget to look over the recipe card below to ensure you have all of the ingredients and their amounts.
Step 1: Fry up the bread
Place a small to medium skillet over medium heat. Make sure the slice of bread sits flat in the skillet. When water flicked on the surface sizzles away, the pan is ready.
Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over one side of the bread in zig-zags. You don’t have to completely saturate the slice. The oil will disperse through the bread while cooking.
Place the bread oil-side down in the center of the hot pan and let toast. Check every couple of minutes — you’re looking for golden brown markings more or less evenly across the slice.
When the first side is toasted, drizzle more olive oil over the upside of the bread slice, and flip. Let toast for a few more minutes until golden. Transfer the toast to a plate to cool.
Step 2: Make the creamy pesto
Add the cottage cheese and pesto to the bowl of a small food processor and pulse until creamy and blended.
Step 3: Make the tomato olive salad
Combine the chopped tomatoes and olives with fresh, minced, dill, parsley, and basil. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar.
Step 4: Assemble the fried toast
Spread a generous amount of the creamy pesto on the fried toast. Shingle pieces of the prosciutto over the pesto. Spoon the tomato olive salad on the prosciutto.
Place a burrata ball on top of the tomato olive salad and carefully slice it open. Spread the cream across the tomatoes. Season the burrata with a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Top with chopped pistachios and serve!
Cook’s Notes
- If you’ve never fried bread before, review this short tutorial. It’s not complicated, but I have the process nailed down to its bare bones and should be helpful for the first time through.
- Prosciutto is usually packaged in long slices. I cut these slices into three or four pieces before adding them to the fried toast. This is optional, but for some people, like me, it’s sometimes hard to make a clean bite through the prosciutto when it’s on a sandwich, and we end up pulling out the entire piece. Cutting it into smaller pieces takes care of this annoyance. (We might still pull out the smaller piece, but then there are other pieces still left!)
- Here’s how I slice round cherry tomatoes into 6ths: Using a sharp paring knife (not a chef’s knife), slice the tomato in half down through the stem scar, holding the tomato together with the fingers of your free hand. Then make a slice perpendicular to the half slice, positioned slightly to the right of the stem scar (if you’re left-handed, then slice to the left of the stem scar). Let those two pieces fall, while still holding on to the two slices of tomatoes. Tip the two slices you’re holding a quarter turn, on their backs, so that the internal tomato meat is now facing up (still holding the slices together). Then slice down through the middles, to create four tomato chunks, for a total of six.
What to pair this fried toast with
- Cold Spaghetti Salad
- Cucumber Slaw
- Vegan Caesar Salad
- Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
- Spicy Green Goddess Gazpacho
I hope this Mediterranean Burrata Fried Toast brings inspired flavors to your table and transports your taste buds to sunny coastlines. It’s perfect for a lavish brunch or a delightful dinner side. Try this and other open-faced sandwiches in my Toasted Tuesdays series.
Mediterranean Burrata Fried Toast with Creamy Pesto
Ingredients
- extra virgin olive oil
- 1 slice of sourdough bread
- 1/3 cup low-fat cottage cheese
- 3 tablespoons basil pesto
- 3 slices prosciutto, each cut into 3 or 4 pieces
- 6 cherry tomatoes quartered
- 6 olives quartered
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh cilantro
- balsamic vinegar
- 1 burrata ball
- salt and black pepper
- chopped pistachios for garnish
Instructions
- Heat a small skillet over medium heat, until drops of water flicked on the surface sizzle away on contact.
- Drizzle the oil in zig-zags across one side of the bread. Lay the bread oil side down in the center of the skillet. Press gently on the slice to ensure maximum contact with the pan.
- Let the bread toast on the one side for several minutes. Check periodically by carefully lifting up a corner of the bread and examining the underside. You’re looking for a nice, golden brown across the surface.
- When the first side is ready, drizzle more oil over the second side (the “up” side) and flip the bread. Again, let the bread toast until that side is golden brown. Remove to a plate to cool.
- While the bread fries, blend the cottage cheese and pesto together until smooth.
- Spread the creamy pesto thickly across the cooled fried toast. You might or might not use the entire amount; I like a thick coating.
- Shingle the prosciutto pieces on top of the creamy pesto.
- Toss the tomatoes, olives, and herbs in a bowl with a little olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Spoon this salad on top of the prosciutto.
- Place the burrata ball on top of the tomato salad and slice it open, spreading the creamy cheese curds across the top. Season with a pinch of flaky salt and black pepper.
- Sprinkle the pistachios over the burrata and serve.