Ree's Panzanella Is the Only Summer Salad You'll Want to Eat (2024)

I made Panzanella this week for a segment on a future Food Network episode, and I was reminded once again just how much I love and adore it. In a nutshell, Panzanella is tomato-bread salad. I imagine it was originally created as a way to use up old, staling bread, as that is Panzanella’s key component. And I can’t remember the first time I ever tried it, but Panzanella has been one of my favorite delights for years and years. There’s just something special about it.

I happened to have my camera with me the other day when I was making it, so I snapped photos of the Panzanella here and there! The photos aren’t quite complete as they would be if I’d been all by my lonesome, but I think I got enough to illustrate the process.

Make Panzanella soon! With all the tomatoes and basil around, it’s definitely a summertime dish.

Start with an English cucumber and a few assorted tomatoes. These are heirlooms, and I would like to state from the record that they did not come from my garden. They came from the store. I haven’t had much luck growing heirlooms the last couple of years, but I still think they’re so weird and interesting.

Basically, you can use any tomato combination you want! Even if you just do a mix of red and yellow, it’ll still be lovely.

Just cut the tomatoes into wedges…

And throw them into a bowl.

Halve and seed the cucumber, then slice it up and throw it into the bowl.

Slice a red onion really thin, and throw those in, too! And you don’t have to slice them thinly if you like big, thick bites of raw onion in your life. Which I don’t. Which is why I slice raw onions really thin.

Thank you for listening.

Next, throw in the bread!

And here’s the deal with the bread: Traditionally, it would be day-old, stale bread that naturally would have hardened a bit on its own. But bread never lasts that long in my house, so I hastened things along by cutting a crusty loaf of Italian bread into cubes, lightly drizzling it with olive oil, and crisping in a 275 degree oven for about 25 minutes or so. I did that well in advance and let the bread cool completely before throwing it in with the veggies.

Now, toss all this together and set it aside for a sec.

Whip up a quick vinaigrette: 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Shake. Do the Hokey Pokey. Turn yourself about.

That’s what it’s all about.

(And you can use balsamic instead if you want to have that kind of flavor going on.)

Next, chiffonade a WHOLE bunch of basil and toss it in. And I would like to state for the record that this basil is from my garden.

It’s a-comin’ out of my ears!

Now just slowly drizzle in the dressing, tossing everything gently as you go. And I usually start with about 3/4 of the dressing first, then add more if I think it needs it.

And now, this is the tough part: You must now summon the patience required to wait at least an hour to dive in. It’s tough. It’s difficult. It’s darn hard. But the salad needs to sit for a bit in order for the tomatoes to give off a little juice and the bread to soak up all the delicious goodness.

Important Note! Often I hear from folks who haven’t ever tried Panzanella that they’re worried about the bread being soggy. This isn’t the case! The idea is to use very crusty Italian bread that has some substance to it—it never gets soggy, it just gets moistened by the glorious dressing and the juices from the tomatoes.

I promise!

I wound up adding even more basil…

And, because I was feeling ornery, some Parmesan shavings.

Lovely, gorgeous…and delicious! After I shot this recipe and the salad had sat a bit, we put it on the snack table with some bowls and forks, and it lasted approximately eleven seconds. Absolute deliciousness!

(Note: You can also check out Georgia Pellegrini‘s Tomato Bread Salad for a slightly different approach. Yum!)

Here’s the handy dandy printable.