My family of 4 tried Panera Bread's $40 'family feast' deal. It was a lot of bread, but mostly a good value.

The $40 feast — which the Panera Bread site says serves four to six people — comes with salad, soup or mac and cheese, and four sandwiches. It seemed like a good deal, considering the 10-inch baguettes usually cost more than $10 each on their own without a soup or salad side.

It was simple to order the family feast at one of the self-service kiosks in our local Panera Bread.

We clicked on the feast, and then were taken through prompts to customize which baguette sandwiches we wanted, our preferred type of salad, and whether we wanted soup or macaroni and cheese.

We could've also ordered the meal online, on the Panera Bread app, or at the cash registers.

There are four types of toasted baguette on offer as part of this Panera Bread meal deal: a smoky Buffalo-chicken melt, pepperoni-mozzarella melt, Green Goddess caprese melt, and black forest ham and Gouda melt.

Since we could choose four sandwiches, we opted for one of each to try them all.

However, had we wanted to, we could have chosen whichever baguette we wanted for each option, even four of the same type.

The next decision to be made when ordering this feast is whether you'd like a family-sized macaroni and cheese or one of three soups.

We opted for creamy tomato soup, but the other two soup options were broccoli-cheddar and homestyle chicken noodle.

Since we dined in the restaurant, the meal was served on plates, with the soup in four separate bowls. If we'd taken the meal home, we'd have left with a quart-sized container of soup to dish up on our own.

Lastly, when customizing the meal, we could choose between two salads: Caesar or Greek.

We chose the Greek salad, which came with romaine, feta, red onions, pepperoncini, olives, and grape tomatoes tossed in a Greek dressing.

The salad was delicious, but next time, I'd ask for the dressing on the side. Our meal included so much food that we got full fast and didn't finish the salad.

We would've loved to have taken our leftover salad home without it getting soggy from the dressing.

Overall, we found the baguette portion of the meal to be a bit disappointing.

In my opinion, all four sandwiches were made with very little filling, which made them seem like they were all bread, no substance. The ham sandwich, for example, had only about five slices of the cold cut across the bread.

Since our soup was also topped with croutons, it felt like our dinner was super carb-heavy.

Had we instead paired our sandwiches with mac and cheese or chicken noodle soup, our meal would've been even more carby.

Although I wish it had been stuffed with more pepperoni and cheese, the pepperoni-mozzarella melt was my family's favorite baguette.

It tasted like French bread pizza and was delicious dipped into the creamy tomato soup. Out of the four baguettes, it's the only one I could see myself ordering again.

Because the baguette sandwiches had a lot of bread, they were extremely filling.

I noticed while eating them that each was scored into three pieces, which was great for cutting them into thirds and taking leftovers home with us.

With this in mind, I think the four of us would order the cheaper three-baguette version of this deal next time and cut the sandwiches into more manageable pieces.

At $40, this family meal deal seemed like a wonderful value.

My kids and I often visit Panera Bread for lunch, and individual meals for just three of us normally cost about the same amount as this big meal for four.

With this value deal, we received way more food than we normally would at Panera Bread and left with plenty of leftovers, which never happens with our usual orders at the chain.

Still, the meal felt like an overwhelming amount of carbs, and we all left feeling more than a little full and sleepy.

The price is right with this family meal deal, but I prefer to order menu items at Panera Bread that contain more protein and vegetables.