Tomato-tapenade hors d'oeuvre

I reverse engineered, or closely enough, this snack I first experienced at the wedding reception of a buddy of mine from grad school.

Start with sourdough bread medallions or cut a baguette into approximately 1/4" thick slices.  You can also try cocktail bread; rye or multigrain might be best, but as usual, whatever your druthers.

If you like it crispy, put the bread slices on a cookie sheet and bake in a 300°F oven for five or ten minutes.  The idea is to get them crispy around the edges but still have them chewy enough that it doesn't just shatter when you take a bite.  I've skipped this step and it turns out okay.

Take some tapenade/olive salad mix, either prefab or made yourself, and mix in shredded sun dried tomatoes.  I had whole tomatoes and they were just a little too dry for my taste so I put them in my food processor, first, with a little sesame oil until the chunks were more or less even and fine.  Add the tapenade until your olive:tomato ratio is between 2:1 and 1:1, then blend a little more until the mixing and texture are even.  It should be a little pasty but you should still be able to distinguish some individual tomato and olive bits.

Mix in a finely graded hard cheese like Parmesan or Asiago (preferably without anti-caking agents, but it's tolerable with that cheese in a canister, although then it won't melt), about the same volume you used for the tomatoes.

Smear onto the bread and put back into the oven for five minutes, or eat cold.  Since this time I didn't pretoast the bread, I did seven minutes.  You may want to do the same if your ingredients aren't at room temperature.

I found some sun dried tomato tapenade at the store recently so I tried it to see if it would be a grave miscarriage of justice not to do the tomatoes myself.  Turned out fine, although I think next time I would try holding the baking time down to five minutes and boosting the temperature to 400°F.

A 3.5 oz bottle of the tomato tapenade got me this far.  Turns out it already had a little goat cheese in it, but oh well.

Next time I might try adding finely diced chicken, or prosciutto or bacon chunks, since everything goes better with cured pork.