This rustic summer salad is a great example of a dish that makes much out of little. It uses inexpensive ingredients and goes a long way to feed a hungry family, all without even having to turn on a stove (a blessing in the sweltering Florentine summer).
Today it is almost always made with crumbled stale bread that has been revived in water, ripe summer tomatoes, crunchy cucumber slices, red onion and torn basil, but this dish most likely began as a simple salad of onion and bread. In the Renaissance, before tomatoes made their way into Italian kitchens, the artist Bronzino penned a poem about a panzanella recipe consisting of cucumbers, basil and rocket. Actually, many older Tuscans recall having the luxury of fresh tomatoes added to their panzanella only after the Second World War.
This dish is best prepared about an hour before serving to give time for the flavours to combine, but it does not keep well for more than a day as the fresh vegetables tend to lose their crunch in the vinegar. Removing the seeds from the tomatoes and cucumbers ensures that the salad doesn’t get too moist. While stale Tuscan bread is able to retain a springy consistency when soaked with liquid, other breads may easily get soggy. Try to find a country-style loaf with a dark, hard crust. Many non-Italian recipes call for toasting the bread, but it is not quite the same as using stale Tuscan bread – in fact, far from it. If you don’t already have stale bread, you should dry out (rather than toast) the fresh bread by baking slices in a low oven until dry to the touch, but not coloured.