Name: Panzanella Recipe
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 25 min
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 3 cups artisan-style bread, cut into cubes; 1/4 cup olive oil, divided; 1 pint multi-colored cherry tomatoes; 3 bell peppers (one each yellow, red, green); ½ red onion; 1 garlic clove; 1 tablespoon thinly sliced basil leaves; 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar; Kosher salt; Fresh ground black pepper

This colorful panzanella recipe is a classic Italian bread salad, featuring crusty bread, ripe tomatoes, bell peppers, and basil.

Summer always seems to slip away, doesn’t it? August is nearly gone, and we feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of our summer checklist. Trip to beach in Michigan? Berry picking at a local farm? Guess it will wait until next year. But one thing we have done: made this panzanella recipe. Panzanella is an Italian bread salad, and it’s everything summer! Ripe tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, and garlic are mixed with crunchy bread and a garlicky vinaigrette into an incredible salad. My, oh my. It’s a family favorite, over here.

Related: 15 Best Fresh Tomato Recipes

How to make this panzanella recipe

Luckily we have another month of tomato season here in Indiana, so we can continue to enjoy the tastes of summer. When ran across some lovely multi-colored cherry tomatoes and bell peppers at our local farmers market, and were inspired to make a panzanella recipe.

What is panzanella? Panzanella is an Italian bread salad that combines dried, crusty bread squares with fresh vegetables and a vinaigrette. It’s a genius idea for using up old bread, and extraordinarily delicious. You can use any fresh veggies you have on hand. The traditional vegetables used in a panzanella recipe are tomatoes, peppers, red onion, and sometime cucumber. Our version of a panzanella looks even more vibrant than most because we used multi-colored cherry tomatoes and three colors of bell peppers.

Here are the basic steps on how to make this panzanella recipe (see below the full recipe):

Toast the bread cubes: Cut bread into cubes and toss it with olive oil and black pepper. Roast the cubes for about 7 minutes at 450 degrees until they’re golden brown.
Chop the vegetables: Chop the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Here we used multi-colored cherry tomatoes and bell peppers, and thinly sliced red onions.
Make the vinaigrette: Mix up a simple vinaigrette: ours uses olive oil, sherry vinegar, and minced garlic.
Mix together and allow to stand: Mix all the ingredients together and let them stand for at least 15 minutes, so that all the flavors can meld. Then the salad is best served immediately. As expected, the bread becomes soggy over time, so leftovers aren’t the best. Try to eat it the day it’s made! (To make it in advance, keep all the components separate before serving.

We used this recipe to help break in our new kitchen with some friends (a sneak peak is here, but we’ll be posting a series about the reno in several week). What’s your favorite summertime dish?

Bread for panzanella — A panzanella is the perfect recipe to use up crusty bread! Like a few day old homemade sourdough

Get the best cherry tomatoes you can find

Like most simple recipes, the flavor of this panzanella recipe is dependent on the quality of ingredients. It’s best to buy ripe, in season cherry tomatoes for this one. If it’s not tomato season, you can sometimes find tomatoes grown in a greenhouse (hydroponic) at the grocery store that have decent flavor. You’ll just want the highest in quality of cherry tomatoes for this recipe to shine!

Buying local tomatoes helps support your local farmers: so if there’s a chance to do so, we heartily recommend it. Please do not even think about using off-season, mealy pink tomatoes. The flavor here is 100% dependent on the quality of your tomato!

The best fresh basil: home grown!

Basil is easy to grow at home: and it’s very hardy as long as you place it in full sun! Basil adds an aromatic flavor to such a wide variety of recipes, and growing it at home is much cheaper than buying it at the store. If you’re looking to grow your own basil plant, we have a step by step guide here: How to Grow Basil.

Looking for easy potluck recipes?

This panzanella recipe would be great for a potluck (as long as it doesn’t sit out for hours!). Here are a few more easy potluck recipes:

This panzanella recipe is…

Vegetarian and gluten-free.