If you are following us on Instagram (and I really don’t know why you wouldn’t be; we’re delightful and you’ll see lots of photos of Charlie, Penny and us too), then you know Ethan has taken up making sourdough bread since the pandemic began. This Panzanella Salad recipe came about out of desire to use up all the ends from the sourdough boules that Ethan has been making weekly. Even though we are now back at work, Ethan is still baking using the starter he made from scratch that we named Lucille. Every Sunday, Ethan makes two loaves of delicious sourdough to last us through the week.
We work our way through the loaves only to be left with end pieces that are too small to use for sandwiches or breakfast toast. I made croutons with some, but even if we had salads every day, we would not get through all the croutons. I could run through the ends into the food processor and make breadcrumbs, but we don’t usually have a need for them (the last time I did this with left over bread, we had a bag of bread crumbs in the freezer for over a year). I knew I had to have recipes somewhere that use stale bread. I immediately thought of Ribollita, but it is too hot for hot soup now. Bread pudding is always a good option, but having a huge tray of it all the time would be too dangerous for me. I searched through my old recipe files and found a recipe for Panzanella Salad that I made when we had a garden and I needed to find something to do with all the tomatoes we were growing.
A Panzanella Salad is usually just bread and tomatoes. However, I wanted to make this into a meal that would be light, yet filling on a hot summer day. I added in some cucumbers for crunch and beans to make it hearty.
Ingredients:
6 cups stale bread cut into 1 inch pieces
1 teaspoon olive oil
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
3 large tomatoes, cut into 1/2 inch piece
1 lage cucumber, diced
1 15 ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 15 ounce can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
For the Dressing:
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon dried sage
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Add the bread cubes to a large salad bowl. Toss the bread cubes with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread the cubes onto a baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and set aside.
2. While the bread is baking, prepare the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the red wine vinegar, olive oil, oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, and sage. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. To the same bowl you used for the bread, add the tomatoes, cucumbers, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, and bread cubes. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss until everything is coated. Let the salad sit for a few minutes until the bread soaks up most of the dressing and gets soft.
Serves 4-6
