If you grow your own vegetables, spring salads feature shades of green: various lettuces, herbs, asparagus, scallions, and peas. Late-summer salads burst with color, but most of my lettuces have bolted by the time tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and red onions are ready. At least that’s my excuse for replacing greens with chunks of homemade sourdough bread that can soak up the tomatoes’ juices and oil-and-vinegar dressing.

I share my favorite variation of panzanella, a tomato and bread salad, this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. It’s heavy on late-summer and early-fall vegetables and herbs, but I also throw in cheese and Kalamata olives. If your garden or farmer’s market features other produce, you can swap in plenty of other ingredients, drop the cheese for a vegan option, and replace the olives with capers or skip them altogether for less tang.

For a solo lunch, I use this recipe as a guideline when piling all of the ingredients straight into the bowl I’ll be eating from, only stopping when I reach the end of the list and the bowl is overflowing. The key is to start with a base of bread and tomatoes and build from there.

Learn more about garden-fresh salads and get the complete recipe for Panzanella (Tomato and Bread Salad) in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

As I explain in this week’s column, days-old bread and juicy tomatoes create the best panzanella. Large heirloom varieties that have so much juice you reach for a rimmed cutting board before slicing into them make fabulous panzanella. I also grow a Black Cherry tomato variety that’s just as juicy as larger fruits, and Sungold and other cherry tomatoes can release a surprising amount of liquid if you let them fully ripen before harvesting.

Panzanella brings the candy-sweet tomatoes of Tuscany to mind, but variations can be found throughout the Mediterranean. The common thread is dried bread that’s given new life with the freshest vegetables available. So think more about bread texture and fresh flavor than which type of loaf or specific produce you use.

Beyond freshness, if you want to add Twice as Tasty flavor to your panzanella, here are just a few recipes on the blog to get you going. These tend to be staples in my panzanella because they’re usually on hand. I typically just splash oil and vinegar onto this salad but will pour on Creamy Balsamic Salad Dressing if some is waiting in my fridge.

• Sourdough Cabin Bread
• Roasted Garlic
• Cold-Smoked Cheese
• Pickled Nasturtium Seeds
• Grilled Bell Peppers

You can find more additions in the recipe index. You can also learn more about harvesting practices that make the most of your garden goodies in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.