The picture for this recipe is even more stale than the bread you’ll need to use for it (though we’ll get to the stale bread part in a second). I actually made this out of the crusty rolls I had remaining after I made curried tomatoes but I completely put off posting the actual recipe.

The good thing about bread is that you can always find a way to use its leftovers. Day old baguette? Make some bruschetta's! Not sure of what to do with the bread from the grocery store? Turn it into breadcrumbs for meatballs or make some bread pudding and the list goes on. Now Panzanella is an Italian salad that will be of some good use in situations like these! As the salad sits over time, the bread soaks up more and more of that delicious vinaigrette its dressed with and changes texture so you have crunchy onions, lettuce, tomatoes with crunchy bread which slowly morphs into crunchy and moist. Exactly the reason why Panzanella is one of those novelties that you eat when you have lots of time to spare, because you actually get to notice these changes.

Stale bread or just dried-out bread?

A lot of recipes will actually call for stale bread because its most likely you’re making this salad in the first place to get rid of leftover bread. In theory, the recipe requisite is stale bread so that its dryness can be used to soak up the dressing. But then would you actually need stale bread? Chances are that stale bread gets fungus really quickly depending on the humidity and temperature of where you live so there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually end up using all the bread.

So instead of “waiting” to have stale bread or risking it going bad, you can just broil some fresh bread in your oven or microwave. Ultimately, you just want bread that doesn’t have any moisture so broiling it does get the job done!

The veggies.

I don’t like to limit myself to the vegetables I’m going to put in here. You could honestly use anything that could be eaten raw: lettuce, red onions, cucumbers, olives, capers, tomatoes or literally anything else you’ll find in your fridge; the sky is the limit!

Classic Italian.

Bread:

Chop up whatever bread you’d like into bite sized cubes. Spread the cubes onto a sheet pan and broil in the oven at about 180C until toasted.

Vegetables (I used):

• Onions (thinly sliced)
• Tomatoes (diced into triangles and salted, to extract the moisture for even better taste)
• Cucumbers (peeled and diced)

Dressing:

• 5-6 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp. mustard
• Superfine sugar (if required)
• Salt
• Pepper

In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper (and sugar, if required). Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking constantly. To ensure a smooth emulsion, make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. Pour the dressing over the prepared vegetables. Add the broiled bread and mix.

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