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Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.
Bread salad most often means panzanella, an Italian dish that started out as stale bread tossed with onions and vinegar but these days is heavy on the tomatoes. While the Spanish likely brought New World tomatoes to Italy in the 1500s, they didn’t appear in a panzanella recipe until the 1920s. America’s most famous bread salad might be the version created by the late Judy Rogers at San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe. Rogers—who spent a summer as a teenage exchange student at the home of a famous French chef and later ran the lunch service in the early days of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse—roasted cubes of rustic bread flavored with currants and pine nuts, then tossed them with arugula and served them under roast chicken.
What makes a bread salad different from any salad loaded with croutons remains subjective, but it basically needs an abundance of crusty bread, usually toasted or grilled, that can soak up an olive oil and vinegar dressing. After that, anything else is fair game. So I chopped up my favorite vegetable with fennel and leek, popped them all into a hot oven until they were just this side of burnt, and tossed them with the requisite bread and a big handful of fresh herbs.
Recipe
½ head green cabbage, chopped
1 bulb fennel, chopped
1 leek, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
4 slices rustic bread, toasted
½ cup chopped mint
½ cup chopped flat leaf parsley
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus a bit more for roasting the vegetables
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Kosher-style sea salt
Spread the chopped cabbage, fennel and leek on a sheet pan, sprinkle with a bit of salt, drizzle with a couple of tablespoons or so of olive oil, and roast at 400 F until they’re getting brown, about 15–20 minutes. If you’ve got your grill fired up, you could cut the cabbage into wedges, the fennel and leek in half, and grill until charred. Chop them up when they’re cool enough to handle.
Cut the toasted bread into bite-sized chunks, then combine it in a large bowl with the charred vegetables, herbs, olive oil, vinegar and a good pinch of salt. Toss well, taste and add more salt if needed. Best if allowed to rest for 20–30 minutes and served at room temperature.