panzanella

Whoever decided to elevate croutons from a mere supporting ingredient to the whole damn salad was an absolute visionary. The revolutionary rebranding of bread from with-salad to the whole salad is not the only genius thing about it. Its beauty also lies in the fact that it can be made ahead. Time allows the dressing to better absorb into the croutons and the tomatoes release more of their own juices.

This is a super classic take on panzanella. Arguably not a take at all—just straight up panzanella. You can swap out or add veggies based on what looks good. Whatever you use, try to cut everything—bread and veggies—into similarly sized pieces.

For this recipe, I made croutons out of leftover focaccia, which makes for particularly nice croutons because it’s already fairly coated in olive oil. Of course, you should just use whatever you have on hand. (If you are looking into the depths of your pantry at a bag of Mike’s Killer Bread that you bought a month ago, and thinking to yourself “should I"?”, the answer is no, you should not. I’m talking about any crusty bread.) Otherwise, do your thing! This salad is all about taking it easy.

Ingredients

8 cups of cubed bread (this was about 1/2 of my tray of focaccia and filled a standard 18”x13” sheet tray)

6 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 pint grape tomatoes, sliced in half (Any tomato is great)

1 cucumber, chopped into 1” pieces

2 bell peppers, cut into 1” pieces

1 shallot, thinly sliced into rounds (red onion is great as well)

1/4 cup kalamata olives, sliced in half

1/4 cup cubed feta (Heads up: if you crumble this into your salad, it will get a little gross looking the next day as it breaks down and absorbs the red wine vinegar. Cubing the feta helps, or add right before serving.)

1/4 cup pickled peperocinis

For the Vinaigrette

1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

1 handful finely chopped parsley

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Step 1

Cube the bread, toss in olive oil and salt. Spread onto a sheet tray in an even layer and bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until golden brown and very crunchy.

Step 2

Prepare your veggies. The idea is to cut them into similar sized pieces. Combine veggies in a large mixing bowl.

Step 3

To make your dressing, whisk together the olive oil, mustard, red wine vinegar, chopped parsley. I like to omit the salt until the very end when everything is combined so that you can adjust accordingly. This is a particularly good idea if you used focaccia for your croutons because it probably already had some salt on top.

Step 4

Remove croutons from oven and add directly to bowl. Toss everything with dressing. Let it sit and absorb all of the dressing.