Italian Grandma Makes Tomato Salad with Bread - PANZANELLA

OP never ate a crouton.

I made this for our last bbq. It sucked. No one took much. We picked the bread out and used the leftovers for pasta.

Thank you, R1.

OP no doubt insisted his peas and mashed potatoes NEVER mixed on his dinner plate.

Perhaps you've never eaten it, or if you have, some non-Italian screwed it up.

Made well, it's simple and a great salad. And in the days when you used everything, wasting nothing, it was a way to use old bread.

It's really not difficult.

It’s what we poors have been doing for centuries.

That's nice, but what does that nun think of the homosexuals? And will she be voting for Trump (again)?

OP has never heard of, or eaten Fattoush I gather? A very popular Lebanese salad.

Would be fun if the sisters started to argue with each other...

"Eh! Too much salt!"

"Enough with the olive oilio!"

R6, most nuns today are very accepting. I can imagine her turning to her sister after her nephew Joey has brought home his "friend" Marcus for dinner and saying, "He's a nice boy...too bad he's not Italian!"

OP, yet another baby tastes food poster. Just fuck off or grow up

We SHALL NOT eat tomato salad with bread and we SHALL NOT eat bread dumplings.

You can't make it with American bread.

The traditional dish is made with unsalted Tuscan bread. It's a chewy bread, yet airy, and it dries beautifully.

In the US you'd really have to search out the right bread. Even "good" American made bread is usually made with "enriched" wheat, chemically bleached. They're lifeless.

You do know that here, in American, you can buy freshly-baked unsalted Tuscan bread of excellent quality at low cost. You do know that?

OMG, I love Gina! She sounds exactly like my dearly departed Nonna!

Lidia on pbs made a salad with orange and onion the other day. It intrigues me. I shop for customers at Aldi and there's French bread from France at very reasonable prices. At Marianos they have more variety at reasonable prices as well

I only got as far as the string beans in the video and I’d bet my life that’s a strangely wonderful salad. I mean, I don’t even like tomatoes but I’m not betting against those women when they get going in the kitchen after watching them pick ingredients right off the vine.

[quote] You do know that here, in American, you can buy freshly-baked unsalted Tuscan bread of excellent quality at low cost. You do know that?

You do know that you're a cunt, right?

You do know that????

You can’t even insult me in Italian? I’m hurt.

As my grandma used to say, cunt is as cunt does.

[quote]You do know that here, in American, you can buy freshly-baked unsalted Tuscan bread of excellent quality at low cost. You do know that?

R16 First of all, your "you do know that?" thing is truly cringe worthy and makes you sound stupid.

As for: "here, in American, you can buy freshly-baked unsalted Tuscan bread of excellent quality at low cost." Well, of course you can, somewhere. That's why I wrote: "In the US you'd really have to search out the right bread."

Do you have a reading comprehension problem?

BTW: such bread is NOT common or easy to find here if you are outside of a major city. And even then...

Having lived in Tuscany for nearly 40 years, I know what the genuine article tastes like.

Do you?

Can you comprehend that you would be mistaken about the availability of quality Italian breads in the U.S.? I guess not. Maybe get your head out of your ass, and Tuscany, a bit more often.

R19 Fallo di nuovo, in italiano. Grazie.

Can you comprehend that even the "best" ersatz "Tuscan" bread is an inferior product compared to the genuine article?

So don’t use Pillsbury! You’re really reaching here…

The genuine article is available at thousands of bakeries and stores. You just can’t look past the loaf of Wonder bread stuck in your head. There’s a world of yeast out there, even in the boonies, where fabulous breads are freshly made and easily purchased.

Ciao!

R23 The problems with American made bread is industry wide. Even for those "artisan" bakers.

Now, it’s about digestion? 😵‍💫🫨

R42 Thinks he's buying good bread....

Keep linking …cheap entertainment as your argument gets ever more tangential.

[quote}Now, it’s about digestion?

It's all about digestion. That is a marker for quality.

Why did we not hear about gluten intolerance years ago?

Why are people that are gluten intolerant in the US, suddenly OK when they're traveling in Europe?

Link away…🥱

Fucking crooked Eyetalians, nothing they do is not criminal, you fucking Tuscan bread is probably made with American fucking wheat, euroTrash just shut up.

Hte you go, it's neverending, it's fake.

There is a place in the Financial District in NYC that made a fantastic Panzanella salad. ironically, it was an Irish pub, Killarny Rose. I just checked their websit menu and, unfortunately, it's no longer on the menu. I used to eat this at least once a week. I used to work on Hanover Square; it's on Pearl Street. It was a short walk from our office building.

This is a favorite of mine. The bread when soaked in a vinaigrette is delicious.

Only the finest quality bread is available in Tuscany …

Those of us that aren't near big cities where one would have choices regarding quality Italian bread - does anyone remember the stores in Brooklyn NY that sold ONLY bread? - you can still make panzanella with the local bread quaintly referred to as Italian bread.

It won't be quite as good, but it passes. For panzanella, toast it after you cube it. (Authentically, one would tear it into pieces.)

I haven't had a good loaf of Italian bread - locally - in years. One gets by.

Interesting to see bread in a salad.

In Pittsburgh they have a thing about putting french fries in a salad (and in sandwiches).

Stores in Brooklyn NY that sold ONLY bread?

Did you mean…what’s the word you’re looking…bakeries! That must be it.

They’re using that Nun as a slave! Did you see?

Call the Pope!

R37 ah, yes—Pittsburgh, Bagnoli of America, or is it Terni?

R38

No, I mean stores that sold NOTHING BUT BREAD. Fulton Street. An entire store selling only bread. Mostly Italian, but other types as well.

I know what a bakery is; these places were not your typical bakery. Not a pastry in sight, cupcake.

OP only knows Wonder Bread and hothouse tomatoes. In her drab, provincial mind only iceberg lettuce shall be used in salads with bottled French dressing.

[quote]Can you comprehend that you would be mistaken about the availability of quality Italian breads in the U.S.?

Can you comprehend that even in big cities, there isn't an Italian bakery on every corner?

And no one posted that there was. Your mind is a terrible thing to waste. Two things are true: there’s a lot of quality Italian bread available all over the US; and there’s a lot of shitty Italian bread available all over Italy.

Give it up.

For R41. Unfortunately, it closed down after filing for bankruptcy.

I love panzanella salad and have only ever had it at a restaurant. I suspect it has a lot more oil on the bread than home cooks would be comfortable using. (Same with salt, in general.)

I'm outside of Philly. One of the most highly rated Italian bread bakeries is Liscio's. They're famous. In the area. An area thick with Italian Americans.

Look them up.

Their bread is considered high quality artisan.

This is the ingredient list of their "Italian Sub Rolls":

"Enriched Wheat Flour (wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Cornmeal, Dextrose, Dough Conditioner (wheat Flour, Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters Of Mono- And Diglycerides, Ammonium Sulfate, Calcium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Enzymes, Soybean Oil, Potassium Iodate), Dough Conditioner (whey, Corn Flour, Monocalcium Phosphate, L-cysteine Hydrochloride, Potassium Bromate), Margarine (vegetable Oil (canola, Cottonseed And/or Soybean Oil), Palm Oil And Palm Kernel Oils, Soy Lecithin, Sodium Benzoate, Ascorbic Acid, Mono- And Diglycerides (mono- And Diglycerides, Mixed Tocopherols, Citric Acid), Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene), Salt, Yeast."

Italian bread in Italy is made with three ingredients.

For those of us (incl. me) in flyover / hinterland situations, in the absence of authentic Italian bread, I'm guessing the key is something crusty and chewy.

R48 The bread needs to be a couple of days old.

Since most US made breads dry to a crumbly mess, cut the bread into cubes and toast it in a slow oven. Use that to make the panzanella.

I should mention that the whole purpose of panzanella, as well as Italy's fabulous bread soups, is that it was a way to use left over bread. Nothing goes to waste.

R45 can’t you tell??!! That’s a bakery, not a bread store!! 😱

R47 that says more about the cultural tastes of Philadelphians than anything else…

R52 Even the very best like Sullivan Street Bakery in NYC use chemically laden wheat: "unbleached enriched white flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) (wheat)".

You can probably sub in pita bread.

Panzanella is delicious . I’ve taken it to potlucks and it always goes down well. Add the baked or toasted bread shortly before serving and it won’t go mushy.

Only on Datalounge, and honorary frau site are vitamins and salt used to enrich flour described as CHEMICALS!!!!!!

Flour is a chemical, as is water. Quit being such hysterics.

Most American places are going to have added preservatives, unless you're talking about a very high end local bakery.

R56

"As for flour, the European laws are ridiculously simple. 100% grain and nothing else. You cannot add any other organic or inorganic substance of any kind, nor treat the flour with any physical or chemical agent."

"In the USA, on the other hand, flour can be treated with a long list of bleaching and aging agents: oxides of nitrogen, chlorine, nitrosyl chloride, chlorine dioxide, azodicarbonamide (the same chemical used to make yoga mats and shoe soles), and various benzoyl peroxide solutions. (You can also toss in some a-amylase to extend the shelf-life and some ascorbic acid as a dough conditioner.)

"And, if you were wondering, flour does “age,” meaning that its characteristics change as it gets exposed to oxygen. More aged (i.e. oxidized) flours are usually whiter and their gluten proteins restructure in a way that allows them to form stronger bonds and therefore makes the dough more elastic. In Europe, flour ages naturally, with time. In the USA, however, time is too expensive and naturally aged flour is too difficult to standardize into a homogenous commercial product. Much easier to throw in a handful of chlorine."

I don't eat bread.

Every once in a great while, I go to Wawa for a sub.

I’ve given up every carb known to man but I absolutely refuse to give up bread.

I won’t do it. You can’t make me!

I’ll die of the fucking diabetes but I’ll keep eating bread. 🥖

Charmed, I'm sure, r60.

Italian bread in Italy is made with three ingredients.

Retarded Euro trash, did you read the article, it's all fake, tell yourself otherwise.

*sigh*

r6 that nun has a specific friendship at the convent. She may still vote Dump though. 😕

SHE USES BREADCRUMBS BECAUSE SHE EATS LIKE A BIRD.

MAMA! YOU HEAR ME?

This thread is exhausting.

The nun is so adorably shy.

I love how she just stands on the side, and listens to her sister talk.

Then she follows her instructions.

Such a humble lady.

OMG their cutting and chopping "technique" leaves much to be desired.

It's horrible!

Their vegetables are in huge chunks (which I hate), the basil is in big pieces, and the garlic is cut very unevenly

A real chef would be horrified!

[quote]OMG their cutting and chopping "technique" leaves much to be desired.

I kept waiting for the nun to slice into her finger or hand.

It looks fabulous.

The salad is missing a pinch of sugar.

Her dressing included EVOO, vinegar, salt and pepper, but it could always use a pinch of sugar for sweetness.

Giada!

Blowjob Queen of the Show Foodies.

[quote]Lidia on pbs made a salad with orange and onion the other day.

You lost me at Lidia. Cant stand the cunt. And she is a cunt off screen, you can tell. So is her son by the way.

No r68 a real chef would know the large size cuts are the essence of what makes that a famous salad. Each bite is different. Not thing that's good for you needs to be turned into a smoothy.

[quote]The salad is missing a pinch of sugar.

There is no sugar in panzanella. It's olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. And that's it.

[quote]OMG their cutting and chopping "technique" leaves much to be desired.

They are doing it correctly. This is a rustic dish.

🤌🏻 Pan-za-NEL-La 🤌🏻

R59, you go to Wawa for a hoagie.

Nun on the run

Does this mean that any salad with croutons in it, is basically a panzanella salad?

No.

Only if they are croutons made in Italy from bread with only three ingredients!

So sayeth the breadmistresses of DL.

I dont know r79, is every recipe with an egg basically an omelet??

Pasta Grannies will answer all your questions. These ladies are the experts.

Per the ladies, your Italian bread simply needs a hard crust and to be unsalted. Otherwise, you’re good to go.

Noted.

The first rule of Fight Club is that we eat anything an old lady presents to us. It looks fabulous. I won’t try it as I tend to fuck these things up beyond recognition. It’s an illness; I start substituting corn chips for bread, beans for tomatoes, and soon we have a bad adventure.

Unsalted? That is total nonsense. For one thing, everyone has been bamboozled into thinking anything Tuscan is great. It's not but especially the bread. I make a lot of bread and use recipes for a lot of different Italian internet and YouTube cooks/bakers. Do I speak it well? No, but I can sure as hell understand and read it.

Italian bread has salt. Almost all the bread recipes have salt. The reason Tuscan bread doesn't have salt is because of some nonsense that happened 400 years ago. Then it became a tradition. No one in the US wants to say it's bland and lacking because they don't want to appear uncultured.

I've been to Tuscany several times. The food is good, as it is in many parts of Italy. But the unsalted bread is blah.

BTW - generally bread consists of four ingredients: Flour, yeast or starter, water, and (you guessed it) salt. The other necessity is a scale, as is a little math skill. A Kitchen Aid is helpful. It's not that hard to make. The important part is the hydration. It can vary depending what style bread you're making. A ml of water is ~equal to one gram. So a recipe calling for 500 g of flour at 60% hydration would use 300 g of water. Instead of paying ridiculous prices for "artisanal" bread, just make some. If you can't get Italian bread flour at your local markets, just use King Arthur Bread Flour. You can bump up the protein by adding a little vital wheat gluten to the flour but totally not necessary. I use SAF instant yeast. Oh, and use distilled water rather than tap. It works with tap but I've geeked out a bit on making bread.

And I type fat.

OP, It's never a good idea to bray one's ignorance.

Croutons (r1), oyster crackers, olive oil-dipped, French Onion Soup, and so on.

Oohh r86 wants a bitch fight!

Watch out —many queens up thread ready to cut you with a bread knife!

FAFO 😊

[quote]Italian bread has salt. Almost all the bread recipes have salt. The reason Tuscan bread doesn't have salt is because of some nonsense that happened 400 years ago. Then it became a tradition. No one in the US wants to say it's bland and lacking because they don't want to appear uncultured.

Tuscan bread does not have salt. Neither does the classic bread (sciapo) of Umbria. And that is where Panzanella originated.

It doesn't matter what the history is, in central Italy people eat unsalted bread because they like it that way.

Also: without salt, the bread is a great foil for savory things. For sopping up the juices of a roast. For using as bruschetta with savory toppings.

I miss Tuscan bread here in the states. It is one of the great breads of the world.

^ Oh...and for eating with the great Tuscan salumi and prosciutto!

^Oh…and it is baked and sold for eating all over the U.S.

R92 Unsalted Tuscan bread? I'm in a town with a large Italian American population. We have two Italian markets. I've never seen unsalted Tuscan bread. Americans really aren't into bread without salt. How much of it could anyone ever sell? What would the demand be?

All those things are great with salted bread. Stale bread soaked in water did not originate nor is it specific to central Italy. I grew up on it and my parents were from the Amalfi Coast. And taralli are made specifically to be soaked in water. They originated in Puglia. And while Puglia is not where my family originated, Puglia is the new Tuscany (so 1990s).

Pan sha shnell ee?

R93 bless your heart

Taralli are eaten more as a snack. With cheese, wine, salumi.

R96 In fact. If you want Tuscan bread, you'll have to make it.

In fact, no. But if you think so, shut up and do it .

I love Grandma Gina! Found her channel during the early days of Covid lockdowns. Her tomato-canning videos were among the first I watched. The best is when she breaks into song. (in Italian, of course)

[quote]Taralli are eaten more as a snack. With cheese, wine, salumi.

R97 - Sorry, I misspoke. I met friselle. At 7:10, Tiziana shows how you bathe them in a bowl of water and then tops with tomato salad. My mother used to get a whole wheat kind that were like small blocks that got spongy when you soaked them but didn't fall apart at all.

It's not that difficult to make a good chewy, crusty loaf at home. Invest in a fibrament baking stone and a baking peel. I've been making panuozzo lately. It's like a neapolitan subway roll, baked quickly in a wood fired oven as if it were a pizza. I do it under the broiler of my electric oven. This vid shows the technique, though I don't use oil in my dough. Mine is a 62% water dough, very easy to handle. 488 grams bread flour, 302 water, 3 yeast, 10 salt for 4 dough balls. Bulk rise once for an hour, then separate into balls and rise again while the oven heats. The oven needs to be as hot as you can get it. There's a hack to raise the max temp on an electric oven. Hold down the bake button until you see 00, then press the + button and increase it to 30 and press start. Then preheat the oven to it's max temp, with the baking stone positioned about a half foot from the broiler. Let it heat up for an hour, then turn the broiler on. Stretch the risen dough balls into elongated ovals like a subway bread, pop them on the stone 2 at a time and turn the broiler on. It will inflate like a balloon and brown up quite nicely in about 5 minutes. Then I make a sandwich with gouda, leftover collard greens, smoked ham and bacon aioli.

R102 - I have a standard baking stone and peel. A couple of tricks I've learned. Leave the baking stone in the oven always. Only remove if necessary. Never use water on it. As for the peel, rub a bit of flour into it before each use, and use semola for ease in sliding the risen dough onto the stone. Checking out your link now.

R102 - Interesting. Okay, he had me at broccoli rabe, sausage, and scamorza. He used so little yeast that I was wondering until the end what it would come out like. Definitely will give this a try!

r103 My back's still good enough to move it out the way hehe. I'm worried it might block the heat flow when it's not being used. But I assume you don't have any issues. Also about that temperature raising hack, make sure to set it back to 00 afterwards or else all your temps will be 30 degrees higher. I dunno why they make it like that.

[quote] A ml of water is ~equal to one gram.

I think 1 mL of water weighs exactly 1 gram. That's the whole beauty of the metric system.

Anyway, I do agree that adding salt to a bread recipe would be an improvement to bread recipe without salt.

You know what better than a baking stone? A baking steel. It's like going from a Cadillac to a Ferrari.

By the way, that no salt thing is so over done. I had a friend that went to Italy and just because that tiny little fact about a small region of Italy, everywhere we go here in the states that serves Italian food, he spurts out about how "the bread in this restaurant is not authentic, they don't put salt in Italian bread"

Bitch please, and all you others that say the same thing, it's only one type of Italian bread, there are many, many other breads made in Italy most of which have salt. Including all pizza dough ever made.

Everybody's pretty.

The two Italian bakeries in town that I know of are owned by Sicilians. So are the two baking companies that supply French and Italian bread to most restaurants. Fortunately, King Arthur has a recipe without salt.

It appears most every place in town has Tuscan bread from La Brea and the local Italian bakery. Is La Brea any good?.

“Tuscan bread may look like bread, it may even smell like bread, but it is not, dear readers, bread as you and I have come to know and love it. Take a bite, and you’ll detect a distinct note of, well, nothing, with just a hint of cardboard.”

R111 exactly.

Americans don't have a palate that can taste nuance.

One thing about this bread is that it is eaten differently than the way Americans do. In Tuscany bread is not on the table when you start a meal. Bread arrives with the second course. It is meant to accompany especially meat. It will be at the start of a meal if salumi is the appetizer or if it is in the form of "crostate" or bruschetta. Italians don't eat bread with butter at a meal and they DO NOT dip bread in olive oil.

One thing you will see (and which I never got used to doing) is people eating with bread in one hand alternating bites with the second course. Bread was designed to fill out the modest portions of meat, making the meat go further if you will. The bread is also used for sopping up cooking juices (la scarpetta). So this saltless bread is a foil to accompany savory food. It's not eaten on its own.

La Brea bread is very good, IMO.

[quote] In Tuscany bread is not on the table when you start a meal. Bread arrives with the second course.

Actually, this may be true for a Sunday dinner or out at a restaurant, but people in Italy don't eat three or four courses every day. They eat bread with their meals such as it is.

Mmmm, her onion bread looks delicious.

But why is this video nearly one hour long??!!!!

Whoever is creating content for Nonna, really really really needs to learn how to edit!

1 hour is too fucking long for a cooking video.

Italian Grandma Makes Bolognese Sauce