Slow Cooker Recipe: Cheesy Panade with Swiss Chard, Beans & Sausage

A panade is one of those dishes that is way better than it has any right to be — or than it looks to be. It's an assembly of day-old bread, shredded cheese, and handy pantry ingredients (in this case, white beans, Swiss chard, and sausage) that gets doused with broth and baked until bubbly, like a savory bread pudding meets French onion soup. Not quite a soup and not quite a casserole, it's something more: the best of both worlds. 

The only real drawback to panades, in my opinion, is that they take so long to bake that I'm always starving by the time it's ready. This is where my friend the slow cooker comes in.
I make all the main ingredients the night before — toasting the bread, cooking the filling, even shredding the cheese — and then assemble everything the next day in the slow cooker. I think the panade is best when cooked for six hours on the HIGH setting, but cutting it back to four hours or slowing it down for eight hours on LOW is also OK. Just don't go beyond eight hours or the panade can burn.
Be forewarned: This recipe make a lot. It's perfect for feeding a crowd or making a week's worth of meals ahead of time. It also freezes surprisingly well, although it looks even more rustic once reheated! I recommend freezing in individual containers and reheating in a bowl in the microwave.