Late summer brings with it another reason for excitement here at Benwood: it’s mushroom foraging season! I don’t actually care to do much foraging myself because I refuse to be responsible for feeding someone a diarrhea and/or death-inducing fungus, but Matt loves it!

He’s told me all about the various mushrooms on the property, and I’ve tuned it all out except one particularly golden nugget of info: how to properly identify a chanterelle, and where the patches are around our home.

The biggest patch is right by our driveway, which is kind of gross but also such a treat, like hundreds of dollars of chanterelles just conveniently grow in our line of sight. Every few weeks during the growing season (which stretches from July to late August) we’ll gather chanterelles for cooking, leaving enough to die out so the spores continue to reproduce. With our bright yellow bounties, we create stir fries and dips and, as is the reason for today’s post, fancy toasts!

This mushroom toast is a simple one, and like all barebones recipes, the quality of ingredients is everything. For bread, we’re going for a crusty exterior and fluffy interior — boule works perfectly here. For butter, I’ll forever be a Kerrygold proselytizer, but if you’ve got a delicious local butter, use that.

And as for the chanterelles, we know foraging them isn’t realistic for most people, but head to your local farmers market and see if there’s a vendor with fresh chanterelles. If there’s no luck on the chanterelle front, you could substitute any fresh, mild-flavored mushroom, such as an oyster mushroom. I probably wouldn’t use portobellos here because they’ve got a stronger, more woody flavor, but hey, maybe that’s your thing. In which case, carry on. Check out the full recipe below :)

Chanterelle Mushroom Toast

Takes 15 minutes | serves 6 as a snack

1 loaf of boule bread or similar
5 tablespoons good olive oil
Sea salt
½ pound chanterelle mushrooms, quartered
6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
4 tablespoons butter

Set your oven to 400 degrees F. Slice four 1” thick pieces of bread and place on a baking sheet. Use a pastry brush to coat each side of the bread slices with olive oil. Sprinkle salt on both sides and place in the oven until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Use tongs to flip and let cook for another 5 minutes until both sides are golden brown and crunchy. Set aside.
Add the butter and garlic together to a saute pan over medium heat and stir regularly until butter has melted. Once the butter begins to brown slightly around the edges, add mushrooms and salt and cook just until the mushrooms begin to wilt slightly, stirring regularly, about 8 minutes.
Spoon the mushrooms and garlic and butter atop the toast, cut each slice into two or more pieces for serving, and enjoy!