Bread Salad!

Panzanella is a Florentine salad of bread and tomatoes. That’s right; it is a salad with bread as a main ingredient! It includes chunks of stale bread soaked in oil and vinegar dressing and tomatoes, sometimes also onions and basil. My quick version has just three main ingredients: chewy bread, juicy tomatoes and sweet cucumber, so they need to be the best quality.

This year I am part of the Lark Rise Bakery bread share and it is some of the best bread I have ever had.  I used cubes of their ciabatta this time. I also love to toss this all in store-bought Gazebo Room Greek salad dressing. As promised, my version is very quick.

Lark Rise Bakery Ciabatta

• 1 chopped cucumber, about 2 cups
• 1 big handful of tomatoes, chopped, about 2 cups
• 2 cups of cubed high-quality bread,  stale or toasted slightly
• 1/2 cup of a favorite Greek, Italian, or oil and vinegar dressing, more if needed.

Combine all the lovely chopped ingredients and toss them in the dressing. It will be best if the flavors can marinate by sitting at room temperature for 20 minutes or so before serving.