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A Tuscan Specialty: Bread And Tomato Salad

Rustic dishes often withstand the test of time — usually because they are easy, make use of local ingredients, and they’re good. Recipes for the same dish are usually not identical – they are adjusted for the hand that makes them and the tongues that eat them — but they consistently have at least one common central ingredient. They are dishes that are usually the result of necessity – the local crop, hard winters, what the land and surrounding environment yield, how they stand up to cooking and/or lack of refrigeration. In most cases they are peasant dishes: frugal, hearty, and delicious.

Panzanella is a bread and tomato salad (with some other ingredients) that is popular in Tuscany, other regions of Italy, and other parts of the world where the main ingredients: crusty bread, tomatoes, olive oil, onions, basil – are commonplace. Typically, the bread is two day to a week old unsalted Tuscan bread – originally, and still, a great way to make use of hard-as-a-rock leftover bread and extra tomatoes, with very tasty results.

In The Bar-Ucci Kitchen With Paola

When I was standing in the little café near our rented villa in Tuscany, I started up an interesting mixed Italian/English conversation with, Paola, the very amiable café owner of Bar-Ucci, the café/wine bar in the village square. She speaks Italian, I speak English, and much to my surprise, I found myself thinking in Greek (still don’t have an explanation for that). She being Italian, and me, Greek, it is safe to say that a whole lot of communication was through waving of the hands and facial expression. We understood each other with no problem.

She invited me into the tiny kitchen behind the café to watch the morning preparation of Panzanella.

Some Leftover Crusty Bread, Ripe Tomatoes, Luscious Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Bright Green Basil, Onions, And A Few More Ingredients . . .

Even though Panzanella is a very rustic dish, it is essential that all of the ingredients be of the best quality. The bread is stale, but if it is supermarket, spongy, and pale, it ends up as a soggy and yucky mess. Lacking access to unsalted Tuscan loaves you can use any good quality crusty loaf. I happen to love olives in any way shape or form, so I’m itching to try combining kalamata olive bread mixed with another crusty variety.

Use the ripest, juiciest tomatoes, the freshest basil, and the best quality extra virgin olive oil available. As with the farro salad I have already written about, Paola, with waving hands punctuating her point, emphasized that extra virgin olive oil was the most important ingredient. Easy to say when you live surrounded by olive trees with a gigantic olive press housed in a medieval stone building just across the square. To her, the fabulous bread, vine ripened tomatoes, and awesome bright green basil are not luxury foods – they’re simply the components of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing that I found really different, and that I don’t love (because I go for crunchy and chewy), is that she soaked her bread in water first, squeezed out any excess drop she could, discarded the center, then tore the crust into pieces. Other recipes just use torn stale bread, without soaking, or even oven toasted bread or torn bread pan fried in olive oil.

You Can Make It A Dinner Salad, Too

Panzanella is totally accepting of a whole array of extra ingredients. With the addition of some protein, it can be a fantastic summer dinner salad.

I have made panzanella before, and I love to add tuna and some crumbled blue cheese or feta along with tomatoes and basil from my garden. For anyone looking for a way to use up the end of season overflow of tomatoes, this is an ideal way to do it.

Some people also add hard boiled eggs, celery, anchovies, hard cheese, and capers, to name a few possibilities. As long as you stick to the basics of bread, tomatoes, onion, basil, salt, vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil, add whatever you like (you can even leave out the onions if you want – although I personally consider that heresy!). It’ll taste great and on top of it all, be a healthy, nutritious meal.

Paola’s Panzanella: No measurements, just eyeballed

Crusty bread soaked in water
Chopped,cored, seeded tomatoes
Cucumber, halved, sliced, seeded
Thinly sliced red onion
Basil, torn into pieces
Salt, pepper, wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil

Remove bread from water, discard inside, squeeze out as much water as possible, tear crust into pieces and put in a big bowl

Add tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions to taste

Add salt, pepper, oil to taste

Refrigerate for one hour

Adjust seasonings, if necessary, before serving

Heap into a serving bowl or on a plate and garnish with basil leaves

Check out other Panzanella recipes at:

Epicurious

Alton Brown, Good Eats, Food Network

Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa, Food Network

Shiny Foil Packets Of Butter

It used to be only butter on bread – big slabs, small pots, or foil wrapped rectangles. You can still find all of these – what would a diner be without those sometimes rock hard, sometimes soft and squishy, gold or silver foil wrapped butter packets?

Butter or Oil?

Butter has stiff competition from olive oil for bread sopping and dipping – as opposed to butter spreading. Olive oil arrives green or golden, plain, herbed or spiced. It can be just plopped down on your table, or poured with flourish from a dark tinted bottle. Some restaurants offer a selection for dipping – and attempt to educate you about the variation in flavors depending upon the olives’ country of origin.

Hidden cameras in Italian restaurants showed that people who put olive oil on a piece of bread eat more fat and calories than if they use butter on their bread. But, the olive oil users end up eating fewer pieces of bread.

For the study, 341 restaurant goers were randomly given olive oil or blocks of butter with their bread. Following dinner, researchers calculated the amount of olive oil or butter and the amount of bread that was consumed.

How Much Butter, How Much Oil, How Much Bread?

Adult diners given olive oil for their bread used 26% more oil on each piece of bread compared to those who were given block butter, but they ended up eating 23% less bread in total.

The researchers found:

Olive oil users used 26% more olive oil on each slice of bread compared to block butter users (40 vs. 33 calories)

Olive oil users ate 23% less bread over the course of a meal than the people who used butter

The olive oil users had a heavier hand than the butter users – for individual slices of bread. However, over the course of the meal when the total amount of bread and either oil or butter was accounted for, the olive oil users used more per slice, but, overall they ate less bread and oil over the course of the meal. They also took in 17% fewer bread calories: 264 calories (oil eaters) vs. 319 calories (butter eaters).

SocialDieter Tip:

Butter, oil, and bread all add significant calories to a meal. A tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, a tablespoon of butter has 102 calories, one pat of butter has around 36 calories. Butter and oil are all fat; olive oil is loaded with heart healthy monounsaturated fat, butter is filled with heart unhealthy saturated fat. Bread varies significantly in calories depending on the type of bread and the size of the piece. Most white bread and French bread averages around 90 to 100 calories a slice. Most dinner rolls average 70 to 75 calories each. The bread and butter or olive oil pre-dinner (and maybe during dinner) ritual can be a real caloric bump for a meal, without much nutritional value. So many of us chow down mindlessly on bread and butter or oil before a meal – because we’re hungry – or, because it’s there for easy nibbling. Choose to eat it or don’t let the bread basket land on your table. The choice is yours – just be mindful of the calories.

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Eating In Tuscany: Panzanella