Panzanella is super simple, super delicious and a wonderfully easy dish.
I eat a lot of bread, but sometimes I wait too long and the loaf goes hard a stone. Instead of throwing it away, I will save it till I have a few loaves. I then cut the bread up into bite sized chunks with a bread knife. I then store any excess bread cubes in a zip lock bag. You can use it to make sweet bread pudding, savory bread pudding, stuffing or panzanella!
Word to the wise...This recipe will only work with "artisan" bread. By that, I mean traditional bread made the way bread has been made for thousands of years--flour, salt, sugar and yeast. That is to say, bread without any preservatives. Bread without preservatives goes hard in about a week or so, depending on humidity. Frankenstein bread (your wonderbreads, etc) have preservatives added to them to prevent them from going stale and hard. That sort of bread will not work for this recipe.
Commercially produced bread (I am thinking sandwich bread or other types of mass produced bread) uses chemicals to speed up the reaction time for the yeast, or uses corn syrup in substitution for regular sugar. Commercially produced bread like that will get moldy very quickly, as the bacteria will be attracted to the high sugar content. Traditional "artisan" bread will dry out relatively quickly. You can use any type of traditional, artisan bread you like. I usually use whole wheat bread or olive bread.
You can use any ingredients you want to for this dish, but you have to have fresh tomatoes, olive oil and balsamic vinegar as a minimum. The tomatoes, when cut, will release a lot of juice. The bread will soak that juice up, along with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and soften the bread. I usually see what is left in my refrigerator and use that. Although it is a bread salad, adding fresh salad greens to it is wonderful!
Ingredients
Dried bread (whole wheat, olive, sourdough artisan bread)
Olive Oil
Fig Balsamic Vinegar (you can also use regular balsamic vinegar, but the fig balsamic gives it a wonderful flavor)
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
Any veggies you want to add (carrots, fennel, celery, green onion, etc)
Freshly cut herbs (rosemary, thyme, lemon thyme)
Usually I will buy a loaf of bread once a week. If I have any leftovers I will just store it in its original bread bag, or my trusty cloth bag I keep my bread in. Once I have a good number of loaves, I cut them up into bite sized bits with a bread knife.
When you are cutting them, try to cut them in such a way that a little bit of the crust of the bread remains in each morsel. This will ensure that the bread doesn't get too soggy.
When you are cutting the bread, you will produce a lot of crumbs. You will also inevitably get a bunch of smaller pieces that will not make for good Panzanella. Take those parts and move them aside. Don't throw those crumbs away! Instead, make
homemade bread crumbs out of them!
The recipe is dead easy and is based on ratios.
Add 2 parts good extra virgin cold pressed olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar. Next, add one or two tomatoes, cut up into dice with all their juices and seed. Chop up half a purple onion, and add that to the mix. I usually add a few chopped olives (sans pits) and freshly cut herbs like rosemary, basil, anything you can get your hand on that is fresh or any vegetables in the fridge you want to get rid of.
Let that sit and stew for an hour or so. Have a taste. Depending on how stale your bread was, you may need to add more olive oil and vinegar. If the bread is still really hard and you think you are going to break a tooth, then you need more olive oil/vinegar. Just maintain the same ratio. I usually do 2 rounds of olive oil/basalmic vinegar. That is usually enough. You don't want to overdo it because then your bread will get really soaked with the vinegar and loose all texture.
You can have this as a side, and works miracles for picnics. You can also add it to your regular salad greens to stretch those salads out for a few more days.
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