panzanella

Panzanella is Tuscan, probably from pane (bread) and zanella (a deep plate or bowl). An alternative theory derives it from pane (bread) and insanellare (to soak). Either way, the word describes bread in a bowl, soaked. The dish in its pre-tomato form was simply stale bread moistened with water and vinegar, mixed with onions and whatever was available. It was poverty food — what you made when you had no fresh bread and not much else.

Tomatoes arrived in Italy from the Americas in the sixteenth century but were not widely eaten until the eighteenth century. The panzanella that most people know today — bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, basil, olive oil, vinegar — is a relatively recent version of a much older dish. The Florentine painter Bronzino (1503-1572) mentioned a bread-and-onion salad in a poem, without tomatoes. The tomato was a latecomer to an existing recipe.

Modern panzanella depends on three things: good stale bread (Tuscan unsalted bread, preferably), ripe tomatoes, and excellent olive oil. Without any of these three, the dish fails. This makes it deeply seasonal and deeply regional — it is best in Tuscany in August, when the tomatoes and the oil are at their peak. Transported to another climate and another bread tradition, it is a different dish.

The stale-bread salad has become fashionable globally. Restaurant menus now feature 'panzanella' made with cornbread, sourdough, or even croutons. These are salads with bread in them, but they are not panzanella. The original requires the bread to dissolve — to collapse into the liquid and merge with the dressing. The bread is not a garnish. It is the dish.