Tuscan Bread Salad or Panzanella

Tuscan Tomato, Cucumber & Bread Salad

Right now I am into everything Tuscan, Italy because I just finished reading The Reluctant Tuscan (I will talk much more about this wonderful book in another post) and am now reading Frances Mayes Under The Tuscan Sun, another delightful book about an American buying a home in Tuscany and the effect it has on them.

My wife and I honeymooned in Tuscany years ago and I forgot just how beautiful the hill towns are and how different the life style is compared to the United States. These two books describe in wonderful detail the everyday life of Tuscan families.

After reading The Reluctant Tuscan and halfway through Under The Tuscan Sun I have a new understanding of my childhood experiences with my best friends from Italian decent. I spent a lot of teenage summer weekends at  Pasqual Benvenuto’s home and never understood why they had these huge Sunday meals in the basement set up as a second kitchen with his family and their extended family.

We would spend hours eating and talking and watching his family yell at each other, then hug and kiss. It looked bizarre to me then but now I understand it is just part of their culture. Food and the act of dining together is a huge aspect of the Italian lifestyle and now I want to learn everything I can about Tuscan cooking.

Tuscan Tomato, Cucumber & Bread Salad

Last night I had the opportunity to prepare this simple salad with fresh local ingredients that we always have on hand while vacationing in Avalon at the Jersey shore. I brought down some wonderful extra virgin olive oil given to us by a friend and some six year old Pedroni’s Aceto Balsamico di Modena (Balsamic Vinegar of Modena) but you can use a less expensive balsamic vinegar and have great results.

Let me quote Frances Mayes as she describes how to simply put this salad together,

“Panzanella, little swamp, is another tomato favorite, a salad of oil, vinegar, tomatoes, basil, cucumber, minced onion, and stale bread soaked in water and squeezed dry - a true invention from necessity. Since bread must be bought every day, Tuscan cooking makes good use of leftovers.”

Nothing could be easier. I used 3 small tomatoes cut up in small bites, half a cucumber also cut up into small bites, minced onion, fresh local basil, 8 slices of leftover hard baguette seasoned with salt and pepper. Like many Tuscan cooks, I added the olive oil and vinegar by eye but you should know the typical ratio is 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar.

The bread was soaked in water and squeezed as dry as possible. At first I didn’t think it would taste very good but after dressing the salad and letting it sit for a while, the bread gave the salad a wonderful texture and absorbed some of the seasoning with the juices from the vegetables. It was amazing.  And it went great with a chilled bottle of Prosecco!