Panzanella

I knew that we were ending up with too much bread in the house for how we eat bread, so I thought I should try something a little different.  Instead of toast, sandwiches, and croutons for on top of salads, I thought of making Panzanella--bread salad!

It's a very simple salad to make.  All you really need are tomatoes, bread and some vinaigrette ingredients.

I had a little surprise thrown into my plan--bread that was too hard to cut into cubes!  It turned into this:

Bread that was too hard to cube.

Bread that is too stale can become breadcrumbs in your food processor.

And it will live in my freezer until I need bread crumbs for something.

Lucky for me, I did have some other bread that I could cube up.  I decided to make it into croutons so I coated the cubes with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them in the oven for 15 minutes. If you have a hearty loaf that's a little stale, you can skip toasting and use it fresh.

Bread cubes ready for the oven.

While these were toasting, I made a vinaigrette using red wine vinegar, finely diced shallot, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

Panzanella!

I diced up a tomato and mixed it all together.  Then I had to wait 10-15 minutes until the croutons and tomatoes and vinaigrette all worked together to make a delicious salad.  Agonizing wait, but well worth it!