This recipe is everything summer cooking should be. It uses the bounty of the season. It is made ahead of time. And it’s best served room temperature. Easy, fresh and beautiful to look at — what is this amazing recipe you ask? It’s panzanella, an Italian bread salad.

So many cuisines have ways to use up leftover bread — from French toast (otherwise known as pain perdu) to the Middle East’s own fattoush. Never ones to waste a thing, the Italians have several dishes that put stale bread to work. Think about ribollita, the hearty Tuscan soup thickened with day-old bread. That’s just the ticket for your wintertime leftover bread. I don’t know about you, but when the mercury tops 90, “hearty” and “soup” are two words that I do not want to hear.

Enter panzanella, a salad that primarily consists of tomatoes and stale bread cut into chunks. The bread cubes soak up the juice from the tomatoes — especially if you leave the salad to sit for a while before serving, as you should — and become soft yet still toothsome.

You can stop right at tomatoes and bread if that is your inclination, but I like to include cucumber, at the very least, possibly red onion and some fresh herbs. If I happen to have fresh mozzarella in the house, I will add that as well. But by now, you can see that we are no longer talking peasant fare. No, panzanella feels positively ambrosial, as does almost any dish that relies on sun-ripened, summer tomatoes.

Here in Chicago, we are not quite in the heart of tomato season. It was such a cool, rainy June. But the cherry tomatoes are looking quite fetching and I could not resist picking up two pints at the farmers market on Saturday.

By Sunday evening, the baguette I had also bought at the farmers market was already turning stale, so the cherry tomatoes were pressed into service as panzanella. They are not quite as juicy as regular tomatoes, but when halved and given enough time to sit, they managed to make the stale bread quite soft and flavorful. Purple basil, another farmers market find, made the salad beautiful to behold.

Panzanella. Gazpacho. Caprese salad. My summer tomato loves. In just a few weeks, they will all be mine. Yes, they will be mine.

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Panzanella (Tuscan Bread Salad)

Ingredients

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved (or use six regular tomatoes)
• 1 baguette or loaf of farm bread (preferably stale)
• 1 hothouse cucumber or six mini cucumbers, diced
• 1 ball fresh mozzarella (optional)
• 1 cup (lightly packed) each chopped basil and Italian flat-leaf parsley
• 3 TB each red wine vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cut bread into cubes and drizzle with olive oil and season with salt.
3. Toss bread crumbs to combine and spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet.
4. Toast in the oven 20 minutes or until browned and crisp. Allow to cool to room temperature.
5. Meanwhile, combine tomatoes, cucumber and mozzarella in a large serving bowl.
6. Add the bread crumbs and toss to combine. Add herbs.
7. Drizzle vinegar and olive oil over salad and toss to combine. Season well with salt and pepper.
8. Allow to sit at room temperature for at least thirty minutes and up to two hours.
9. Taste and adjust seasoning prior to serving.

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