📋 Easy Panzanella Salad (Tuscan Tomato and Bread Salad)
Panzanella salad is a Tuscan salad made of chunky lightly toasted crusty bread, tomatoes, red onions, cucumber, and Italian basil all soaked in the simplest salad dressing. If you got ripe tomatoes and day-old bread, the best summer Italian bread salad is just a few minutes away!
Servings: 6 servings
Calories: 268kcal
Ingredients
- 1 day old crusty ‘stale’ bread about 4-5 cups of stale bread broken into 1 inch chunks
- 3 ripe juicy tomatoes cut into small wedges or cubes
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 small red onion sliced thin
- 2 cucumbers unpeeled, seeded, cut into ½ inch slices
- 1 cup basil
For salad dressing-
- 2 tablespoon white wine vinegar or red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- ¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 ½ teaspoon garlic minced
Instructions
- Slice tomatoes into thin wedges or cut into small cubes.
- Salt cut tomatoes with kosher salt. Toss well. Let tomatoes sit in colander with a bowl under it to collect all the wonderful tomato juice. Allow tomatoes to drain the juices for minimum of 15 minutes to a maximum an hour.
- Meanwhile prep other ingredients.
- Slice red onions.
- Cut the ends of the cucumber, and peel the seeds using a melon baller or spoon. Cut the cucumber into ½ inch slices. If you don’t like the skin on cucumber feel free to peel the skin.
- Cut bread into 1-inch chunks. Toast bread in olive oil until lightly browned on all sides. You can toast bread chunks in the oven or air fryer too.
- To the tomato juice that was drained add white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, minced garlic, salt, and pepper to taste, and extra virgin olive oil.
- Whisk well.
- Gather all salad ingredients into a large salad bowl- drained tomatoes, sliced onion, sliced cucumber, toasted bread, and fresh basil leaves.
- Pour the dressing over the salad.
- Toss well.
- Let sit for a minimum of 5 minutes to a maximum of 1 hour so the salad marinates and sucks all the flavors and juices.
- Enjoy with grilled fish, grilled chicken, BBQ chicken, shrimp.
Video
Notes
- Bread: use a day-old dense crusty bread like sourdough bread, ciabatta, or artisan loaf bread. I don't recommend dinner rolls for this salad. Softer bread won’t hold its shape and will turn mushy once salad dressing is added to it.Â
- Bread to vegetable ratio: Use 1 portion of bread and 2 portions of mixed vegetables in the salad.
- Sweating tomatoes:Â highly recommend you don't skip this step. Adding salt to tomatoes will make them sweat all their juices and release excess moisture. Without removing excess moisture from tomatoes the bread would get too soggy from tomato juice.
- Tomatoes: use the best quality juicy, ripe tomatoes. You can use Italian tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, or Roma tomatoes to make the salad.
- Cucumber: feel free to peel the skin off the cucumber. To keep cucumber from releasing moisture into the salad I recommend you remove its seeds.
- Vinegar for salad dressing: White wine vinegar or red wine vinegar can be used to make dressing.
Nutrition
Calories: 268kcal | Carbohydrates: 6g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 27g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 20g | Sodium: 403mg | Potassium: 255mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 3g | Vitamin A: 542IU | Vitamin C: 10mg | Calcium: 31mg | Iron: 1mg