Panzanella – Tuscan marinated bread salad with tomatoes and herbs – is not only the perfect summertime meal, but also the perfect use for that delicious crusty bread that may have sat out on the counter too long.
The weather in New York is finally starting to warm up, and it’s making me have extreme cravings for some classic summertime foods: tomatoes and zucchini, fresh herbs, and loads of deceptively simple dishes that shine with beautiful produce. It’s not quite the season for all of those fresh fruits and vegetables (although I did do some garden prep this weekend!) so in the mean time I’ll have to settle for reaching for my produce from the grocery store. This panzanella salad was the perfect answer to my cravings, and if my garden’s track record in growing zucchini and tomatoes (check out the biggest zucchini in the world I grew last year!) has anything to say about it, I’ll be making this recipe all summer long.
While I’d like the chalk up all of my reasoning for making this panzanella salad to a craving for fresh, simple food, there is actually a much larger reason why I made this dish on a Monday night after work: because I, like my father, can’t stand to throw things away. My brother bought a delicious loaf of crusty bread from an incredible French bakery in our neighborhood on Saturday morning, which we enjoyed that night with burrata and tomato. We lazily left the remaining quarter of a loaf out overnight and the next morning it was as hard as a rock. “Throw it away,” Ben told me, but with a New Years resolution to produce less waste and a life-long mantra instilled in me by my dad to never waste anything – especially food – I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I figured I’d make breadcrumbs with it, but this panzanella salad proved to be an even better option.
Rubbing toasty bread with fresh garlic for an added layer of flavor in my panzanella salad
Panzanella is the perfect use for stale bread because all the juices from the vinaigrette and tomatoes get absorbed into the bread, making it totally unnoticeable that it’s even gone stale. In fact, panzanella is even better with stale bread, but if you don’t happen to have any laying around, just toast your bread first. You want to make sure it has some sort of crustiness so that it doesn’t become totally mushy. Even though my bread was stale, I still toasted it with olive oil anyway for an added depth of flavor, and also so that I could do a little trick I learned in Italy for making garlic bread. Right when the bread comes out of the oven, when it’s still all hot and the surface of it has become slightly jagged and hardened, you rub it with a raw garlic clove. The heat of the bread paired with the sharpness of the crusty parts will literally melt the raw garlic directly into the bread, giving you the perfect bit of garlicky bite while not being totally overpowering. I love using this trick for a panzanella salad because it’s one more layer of flavor in an otherwise simple dish.
Sauteed zucchini is the perfect addition to panzanella
Going along with my theme of wasting nothing, I decided to whip up this simple panzanella salad with exactly what I had on hand: stale bread, tomatoes, zucchini, sweet white onion, and fresh herbs from my indoor garden. Traditional panzanella usually has cucumber and peppers in it, but in my opinion as long as there’s bread, tomato, and some sort of vinaigrette, it can be considered a panzanella. Stick with my recipe or simply use it as a guideline for experimenting with your own favorite flavors (or whatever you happen to have on hand) for a simple and easy meal perfect for the spring or summertime.
- ¼ loaf crusty French or Italian bread
- 2 fresh tomatoes, diced
- 1 medium zucchini
- 1 garlic clove, peeled
- ¼ cup minced sweet white or red onion
- Fresh herbs, such as basil or parsley, minced
- Salt and pepper
- For simple vinaigrette:
- ⅓ cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper
- Preheat oven or toaster oven to 350. Cut loaf of bread in half lengthwise and drizzle with olive oil. Toast in oven until browned on top, about 10 minutes.
- While bread is toasting, slice zucchini into ⅛ inch thick rounds. Sauté in olive oil in single layers over medium heat, turning until both sides are browned, 3 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper.
- As soon as bread is browned, rub raw garlic clove onto both sides of the bread. Cut bread into 1 inch cubes.
- For the vinaigrette, vigorously whisk olive oil, vinegar, mustard and salt and pepper. In a large bowl toss bread cubes with vinaigrette, tomatoes, zucchini, onion and herbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Allow to chill for half an hour for flavors to come together, the serve.
Leave a Reply