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07/09/2001 Archived Entry: "Panzanella & Other Bread Salads"

Bread salad seems to be quite the fashionable thing this summer. Panzanella, the Tuscan bread salad, has come up on Food Talk twice in the last two weeks. And no sooner had a listener mentioned it than I started to see some version of it popping up on menus around town, and articles about it in newspapers and magazines. I figure I should put in my own two cents. I’ve been eating it and making it for 30 years.

I love panzanella, which, in its most traditional form, is nothing more (or less) than soaked stale bread, diced tomatoes, and sliced or diced red onion, dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. But, as with anything made with so few ingredients, each one has to be superb for the dish to be superb. When you get it in a restaurant that is rarely the case. I just had a bad panzanella in a good restaurant, which proves the point, and also made me think that a good subject for a program or essay is “When Good Restaurants Serve Bad Food.” How does it happen?

It happens because they don’t take the utmost care with the dish. In the case of panzanella, the bread must be of the sort that it will not turn to mush when moistened, but break into soft granules that still retain some body, some small chewiness. The real Tuscan bread, which is, unless you bake it yourself, virtually non-existent in New York (hence, I venture to say, in the U.S.), is obviously the perfect bread for a dish that was created to use up leftovers of it. You can make a very respectable panzanella with other breads, however. I use Royal Crown Bakery’s standard round or long loaf because the chewy texture of the Bensonhurst bakery’s bread is perfect, it’s my favorite bread, and it is easily available to me. Sullivan Street Bakery’s bread is also excellent. Both breads are also sold around the metro area at specialty shops, not to mention distributed to and served in restaurants. There are, I am sure, many other sturdy breads that are good for panzanella.

Only in the last two weeks have I been able to buy tomatoes of good enough quality to even consider making panzanella. At the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, some southern New Jersey field tomatoes have begun to arrive. Last week at the Union Square Greenmarket, I found some good hot house tomatoes. Any day now, there should be excellent tomatoes at most farm stands. Unless it starts to pour incessantly, it looks like it is going to be a good tomato season. The last couple of years the tomatoes have been watery and lackluster. This year there’s a good chance they will have the concentrated flavor, sweetness, good acidity and intoxicating aroma that makes tomatoes our favorite vegetable. (Okay, I know it is really a fruit.)

Red onion is easy. You can buy good red onions everywhere. But I found some tiny new red onions at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, and they are as sweet as can be. Red onion is used for its color in panzanella, but also its sweet flavor. If you want, use the sweet, white spring onions available at many farmstands.

If you have ever wondered why you would want to spend $30 or more on a bottle of Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, panzanella is an excellent reason. The peppery bite, eucalyptus-like aroma, and gorgeous green olive flavor and color of the best Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil is what will make your panzanella taste like the one you ate in Tuscany, or wish you could be eating in Tuscany. Add a judicious amount of good quality red wine vinegar, not a cherry-ish supermarket brand, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

There are Italian bread salads other than panzanella. In Naples At Table, I discuss the origins of and give the recipe for Caponata Napoletana, which is no relation at all to the Sicilian eggplant appetizer Caponata, or Caponatina, as it is also called, but a close relation to panzanella and to the Genovese bread salad called caponadda, a recipe you can find in Fred Plotkin’s Recipes From Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera.

The Neapolitan Caponata is also called Aqua Sale (literally Salt Water) because it is based on hard-tack or what is called pane biscotato in Italian, twice-baked bread, that is moistened and softened with salted water. Originally, this hard bread was sent with fishermen and sailors out to sea and they would reconstitute it by dipping it into sea water. The seamen origins of the dish is the reason Caponata often includes tuna, anchovies, or other fish.

There are two types of pane biscotato. One is a thick, solid slice. The other is shaped in a ring and called freselle. Both are available in boxes or cellophane bags imported from Italy. Many local Italian bakeries make them, too. I sometimes buy the imported ones from Di Palo on the corner of Grand St. and Mott St., in what is left of Little Italy; at Buon Italia in the Chelsea Market, on Ninth Ave. and 15th St., and at Jerry’s Gourmet, on S. Dean St. in Englewood, New Jersey. I particularly like the whole wheat ones, although they do go rancid after a couple of months of storage because whole wheat flour contains the oil-rich germ of the grain. I find Brooklyn-baked freselle in plastic bags at D. Coluccio & Sons on 60th St. Ave. near 12th Ave. in Bensonhurst.

I try to always have pane biscotato and/or freselle in the house, kept in a big tin, especially during the summer when I enjoy making and eating Caponata, but also during the rest of the year, when they are what you put on the bottom of a bowl for various and many zuppe, the brothy dishes that call for hard bread to sop up their juices. These include zuppa di pesce, fish soup, but also vegetables, such as broccoli di rape and escarole, cooked with garlic, oil, hot pepper, and enough water to make a flavorful broth. See Naples At Table for many other recipes using pane biscotato and freselle.

Another bread salad is Fatoush, which is the Middle Eastern way with stale bread. It’s a great use for stale pita: Toss broken pieces of the bread with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions, and perhaps some chopped lettuce, too. Dress it with Lebanese or Israeli olive oil for the authentic flavor of the Levant, some lemon juice, and sumac, which are the crushed red berries of a shrub that actually grows along roadsides of the northeast and mid-Atlantic states (perhaps in other parts of the country, too), but finds its most flavor in the Middle East. Every time I mention sumac on the radio or in print, a listener or reader questions the wisdom of using what they think is a poisonous plant. Red sumac is not, however, the legendary poison sumac. That’s white sumac. Red sumac was, in fact, used by native Americans of the northeast to make a tart beverage. It is used in the Middle East, and in Turkey, for it’s slightly sour flavor. In Israel, Syria, and Jordan it is often a component in zahtar, the seasoning that is mostly dried wild hyssop and sometimes sesame seeds. In Turkey, sumac is sprinkled on thinly sliced red onions that are the frequent condiment/salad accompaniment to grilled meats, poultry and fish. I have a recipe for Fatoush in Soup Suppers, plus several, main-course Middle Eastern soups to which it would be a great first course.


Panzanella

Serves 4 to 6

8 cups stale bread cut into 1/2-inch cubes (1 round loaf of Royal Crown Bakery bread)
1 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes (3 medium tomatoes), cut into 1/4- to 1/3-inch cubes
1 8-ounce red onion, peeled, halved through the ends, and cut crosswise into the thinnest possible crescent slices
1/2 cup loosely packed basil leaves, snipped, torn or cut into large pieces
1/2 cup Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, or more to taste
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste

About the bread: I used a whole loaf of bread that was a week old and kept in a brown paper bag, which in turn was kept in an open plastic bag. I cut off the crust, cut the bread into 1/2-inch thick slices, then cut the slices into 1/2-inch cubes. One loaf resulted in slightly more than 8 cups of 1/2-inch cubes. I put the bread into my large wooden mixing bowl, covered it with cold tap water – about 1 1/2 quarts was needed – then let it stand for 10 minutes, while I prepared the tomatoes.

I then squeezed the bread by handfuls to remove the excess water, which resulted in a generous quart of bread. I put the bread back in the dried wooden bowl and, using my fingertips, as if I were pinching butter into flour for pastry, I broke the bread into granules and smaller pieces.

About the tomatoes: Don’t make panzanella unless you can get really flavorful, ripe tomatoes. The dish gets most of its flavor from tomatoes and olive oil.

Core the tomatoes, then, using a serrated blade knife, cut them into 1/2-inch slices. Cut the ends into 1/4- to 1/3-inch cubes, then stack the center slices and do the same. You should have 3 cups of tomatoes. Scrape the tomatoes and their juices off the board and put on top of the bread.

About the red onion:You can dice the red onion, instead of slicing it. I, however, like the look and the texture of very thinly sliced crescents of red onion. Scatter the red onion over the moistened onion and diced tomatoes in the bowl.

About the basil: Try to use the small leaves from the growing tips. They are the most fragrant and least medicinal. I snip basil with a scissors, or, if I don’t care that some may get under my nails and turn black, I tear them. Add them to the bowl.

Drizzle the olive oil evenly over the salad. Sprinkle on the vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Toss the salad well, then taste again for vinegar, salt and pepper, and adjust seasoning to taste.

Let stand about 30 minutes before serving. The salad is best when eaten then or within a few hours of its making.

VARIATIONS: Some Tuscans add diced cucumber to their panzanella. For the above amount, use no more than 1/2 cup, about 1 medium kirby cucumber, seeded.

Another good addition is canned tuna fish. To the above quantity of salad, use one or two 6 1/2-ounce cans tuna. I also like capers, especially if I have added tuna. I would use about 1/4 cup rinsed and dried salted capers, preferably large ones. Pitted whole, halved or sliced green or black olives are an excellent addition, either as a garnish or tossed in the salad. Anchovies cut into 1/2-inch pieces mixed into the salad or whole as a garnish is another possibility. Do not add too much of the extra additions or you will throw the proportions off entirely. If you want to add all of the above, for instance, make a slightly larger base salad – with more bread, tomato, basil, oil, and vinegar. More salt will probably not be necessary, because all the suggested additions are somewhat salty, but extra pepper will definitely be in order.