Tuscan panzanella, grandma’s recipe and a classic of frugal cooking. Panzanella is a simple, peasant dish, fresh and very tasty, typical of Tuscany and central Italy, a Mediterranean recipe, vegan and vegetarian, perfect for summer. Made with rustic stale bread and seasonal vegetables, panzanella is the best recipe to avoid wasting stale bread, one of the summer dinner recipes I love most and make often. Tomatoes, cucumbers and red onions are always available in summer, and if you also have some stale bread and good olive oil, our cold summer soup is ready! Let’s go to the kitchen—I’ll tell you how to make grandma’s classic panzanella, but first, as always, a reminder: if you want to stay updated on all my recipes, you can follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).
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- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 15 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: No-cook
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Spring, Summer and Autumn
Ingredients for making panzanella
- 12 oz stale bread (Tuscan or whatever you have at home)
- 4 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 cup water (or as needed)
- 1 red onion
- to taste salt
- to taste extra virgin olive oil
- 14 oz vine-ripened tomatoes (I use cherry tomatoes)
- 1 cucumber (I use the cetrangolo variety)
- 1 pinch black pepper
- to taste red basil
Tools
- Bowl
- Cutting board
Preparing the panzanella
Panzanella is a traditional peasant recipe and should therefore be made with local products (Tuscan); since I’m not from Tuscany I used Sicilian products.
Cut the stale bread into cubes, put it in a bowl and pour the water and vinegar over it; stick to the indicated amount of vinegar, but you can increase the amount of water. Let everything rest for about twenty minutes, then coarsely break up the bread.
Meanwhile peel the cucumber and slice it, rinse the tomatoes and cut them into pieces, and slice the red onion.
Combine the vegetables with the bread, give an ample drizzle of oil, adjust the salt if necessary (Tuscan bread has no salt) and the pepper, add torn leaves of fresh basil, mix and let rest at least an hour in the fridge before serving.
Storage and tips
Panzanella should be made in the morning for lunch and in the afternoon for dinner and stored in the fridge, but it is also excellent the next day. If you don’t like the strong taste of raw onion, put the sliced onion in a bowl, add half a level tablespoon of salt and 50 ml (about 3 tbsp) of vinegar, mix and let it rest for 10 minutes, then rinse well and drain: you’ll see it lose a lot of its liquid and its pungent smell, becoming milder.
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