Greek Panzanella Salad

The flavors are so bold and fresh in this salad, its sure to be a crowd pleaser!! 

Lets break this flavorful salad down word for word. The first word, Greek - Greek food has ingredients that are rather close to Italian food. They both typically use pasta, grains, fish, olive oil, fresh herbs, cheeses and most importantly WINE. The second word, Panzanella is derived from the Italians. A classic Italian Panzanella Salad is made up mostly of bread and tomatoes. So we take this bread and tomato summer salad and add bold Greek flavors and we get GREEK PANZANELLA!!! 

This recipe is based off of one of Ina Garten's. I, of course put my own spin on it =P !!

This salad is a great representation of things I like to make in the kitchen. I like to cook food with layers of flavor that develop as time goes on.  I think any meal prepared should be two things -  Simple & Tasty. 

Now onto the recipe to make this 'Greek Panz' as I like to call it; you will need: 

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil 
• 1 fresh French loaf of bread - Any fresh bread will do, foccicia would even be nice in this 
• Sea Salt and Fresh ground pepper 
• 1 hothouse cucumber (If you can't find hothouse, any cucumber will do!)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 orange bell pepper 
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes 
• 1/2 big red onion or 1 small red onion 
• 4 oz. contained of crumbled Feta Cheese 
• 7 oz. container of pitted Kalamata Olives (They are my favorite so I use ALOT)  

I have made many variations of this vinaigrette, depending what I have on hand and what I don't. This is what I usually use: 

Juice from 1 lemon

Sea Salt and Pepper to taste

1/2 cup Red Wine Vinegar

1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil 

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder 

Palmful of Dried Oregano 

Fresh Parsley - minced 

Fresh Basil - chiffionaded  

Heaping spoonful of Stone Ground Mustard or Dijon Mustard (If I have it I use it, If I don't- I don't) 

To start the Greek Panz cut the French loaf into cubes. While you are dicing the bread cover the bottom of a large saute pan with olive oil and heat it up. Once the bread is cut the pan should be hot enough to start forming a crust on the bread. 

Bread Before 

Bread After

 While the bread is toasting I like to add a little more Olive Oil & sprinkle some garlic powder, onion powder and salt onto it. Set the bread aside and let it cool. Now you must begin the task of chopping. This salad is so easy to make it just requires of chopping - and I mean A LOT!!


First chop the cucumber.

Ok that's done now halve the Cherry Tomatoes!

Chopping Bell Peppers can sometimes get very messy. I highly doubt my method of chopping a pepper will be taught in culinary school but let me tell you, it gets the seeds out and keeps the pepper in tact. Run your knife around the pepper, basically cutting the top potion of the pepper off (giving him a hat)... 

...but never run your knife fully through the pepper ( you'll hit the seeds!) Once the top is off, the seeds are more often than not attached to the top you just cut off.  Now that all the seeds are gone just dice the pepper into bite size pieces. 

Ok, onto the Red Onion. I use this handy little chopper because my eyes water SO SO SO bad when dicing an onion - If you are dicing by hand you can try the trick of running the onion under ice cold water before chopping. This helps me a little but I guess I just have super senstive eyes when it comes to onions so the chopper it is!!!

Once the onion is in the bowl, drain the Kalamata Olives and add them to the bowl along with the bread bites and Feta Cheese.

To make the Vinaigrette add all the ingredients listed and slowly drizzle the Olive Oil in, creating an emulsion. Pour over the salad and gently toss it. This salad can be served immediately but I prefer to refrigerate the salad for about 2 hours before serving. The vinaigrette soaks into the bread and it has time for all the flavors to come together nicely.