Panzanella

The idea of panzanella has never really appealed to me.  I suppose it's the corruption of a healthy salad with big chunks of bread, but my aversion to adding bread to salad seems a little ridiculous when I stop to think about it.  I'll gladly eat a big hunk of bread alongside a salad.  I have no problem making salads less healthy with the addition of any variety of cheese.  While I'm not a huge fan of croutons, I'm more than happy to consume them if they're well-made (try the ones at The Ivy in West Burlington, Iowa, or the cornbread ones at Bandera restaurants), and aren't croutons just cooked chunks of bread?  Maybe it's those evil people who started the low-carb fad that somehow convinced me that throwing some cubes of stale bread into a salad is going to ruin my girlish figure.  Well that was the first 26 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days of my life.  For the past 7 days of my life, after my first taste of panzanella, I have changed my way of thinking.  Chunks of bread + vegetables + cheese + vinaigrette = a delightful dish.  This recipe is for you, low-carb industry!

I was inspired to make panzanella after coming across the Pioneer Woman's recipe for Pita Chip Panzanella, and I chose ingredients for my version based on ingredients I had sitting around that needed to be used up.  If you do not have everything I used in the exact quantities, you can easily play around with amounts and ingredients.  

Panzanella

1/3 loaf stale bread

2 ears of cooked corn

2 tomatoes

1/2 ball fresh mozzarella

A few basil leaves

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Salt & pepper

I believe this was a country wheat loaf.  Or rustic wheat.  Something + wheat.  

Cut the bread into 1/2"-1" cubes.  

Cut the stems out of the tomatoes. 

Then cut them into fairly large chunks.  I don't enjoy biting into really big chunks of raw tomatoes, but I didn't want them to get lost among the bread chunks.  Shoot for something around the same size of the bread chunks or slightly smaller.  

Scrape the kernels off the ears of corn.  

Here's how much mozzarella I used.  I would have used a little more if I'd had more, but that's just me.  

Look, a cheese butt!  Or poorly done implants. 

Chop the mozzarella into small cubes.  

I used all of the larger leaves on my basil plant, and if you have more you could certainly use it 

Combine the bread, tomatoes, corn, mozzarella, and basil in a big bowl.  Add a little salt & pepper.  

In a small bowl, mix the olive oil and vinegar.  

Pour about half of the dressing on the salad and stir well to combine.  Slowly add more dressing until you're satisfied with the salad/dressing ratio.

Once the salad was made, I threw it in my bike basket and set off to Lake Harriet for a picnic with Matt.   It was a perfect summer lunch served alongside leftover turkey burgers and some gigantic cherries.