Anatomy of a bread salad

The Tuscan panzanella and the Roman panzanella | Acquasale in Apulia | Cialledda fredda in Matera and ciaudella in Abruzzo | Cundigiun and capponada in Liguria

This summer I made panzanella very often. I think it was due to the combination of availability of plenty of sourdough bread gone stale, and an abundance of seasonal produce from the garden: ripe heirloom tomatoes, fresh onions, crisp cucumbers, and handfuls of fresh basil leaves.

I had panzanella at home in Tuscany countless times, then I tasted a surprisingly similar acquasale in Puglia. Whenever there was stale bread and an abundance of seasonal produce, the regional cucina povera came out with nourishing, filling recipes to give a second life to day-old bread.

Today, I’m taking you on a tour, we’ll explore the different bread salads of the Italian cucina povera through their ingredients, traditions, and recipes.

Panzanella, the Tuscan bread salad

Known since Boccaccio’s time as “washed bread,” this ancient Tuscan recipe was later immortalized by Renaissance painter and poet Bronzino (1503-1572), who wrote of a green panzanella made with onion, cucumber, purslane and arugula. Tomatoes were not included, as they had just been introduced to Europe from the Americas and were not yet commonplace.

Chi vuol trapassar sopra le stelle / en’tinga il pane e mangia a tirapelle / un’insalata di cipolla trita / colla porcellanetta e citriuoli / vince ogni altro piacer di questa vita / considerate un po’ s’aggiungessi bassilico / e ruchetta.

In my family, we tend to make the classic panzanella, without exception. But then friends arrive, each wanting a different version. Some want a panzanella without onion, others prefer it without cucumber. Panzanella is one of those dishes that invariably bend to the mood of the day and what’s on hand in the garden or pantry.

Let’s have a look at its essential ingredients

The most essential ingredient is Tuscan bread which has gone stale by a few days. Tuscan bread is made without salt and has a dense, bland crumb and a dark crust. The best option would be a sourdough loaf baked in a wood-burning oven. It is roughly cut into chunks, then soaked in water, squeezed out to remove the excess water, and crumbled into a large bowl. This is not how everyone in Tuscany makes it (as someone soaks the bread directly with the vegetables’ water), but this is how my grandma has been making it for all her life.

This is the essential step in the making of panzanella: stale bread, either soaked in water, water acidulated with some vinegar, or just in the vegetables’ moisture, but not bread croutons. Never. I see the point of using crunchy, golden bread croutons to make a tasty bread salad, but that is not a panzanella.

The bread is then tossed with tomatoes, cucumbers, and thinly sliced red onion. As for the dressing, opt for your best extra virgin olive oil (our olive oil is intense and slightly bitter), salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a drizzle of red wine vinegar. Vinegar is essential, it is what gives panzanella its refreshing taste, making it the perfect summer dish. A handful of fresh basil leaves add the last finishing touch to panzanella.

Other possible ingredients? Celery, arugula, purslane, olives, capers, and even canned tuna, mozzarella and boiled eggs.

Here’s my recipe for panzanella on the blog.

I’ve played with the ingredients of panzanella in recent years, as the crumbled soaked bread is the perfect canvas to absorb seasonal flavours and elevate them to a filling, nutritious dish.

Last week, for example, I shared a prosciutto and melon panzanella, born from the marriage of two Italian summer classics. You can read more about it on the blog.

You can also make an autumn panzanella salad with pan-fried butternut squash and carrots, a handful of meaty olives, and caramelized red onions to add a sweet and sour touch. When it comes to dressing the salad, opt for a lighter apple cider vinegar that won’t steal the show to freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil, olio nuovo, that will release all its peppery aromas when it will get in contact with the hot vegetables. This is the recipe on the blog.

But bread salads are not a prerogative of Tuscany. With different names and a variety of local and seasonal ingredients, they are widespread in most of the central and southern regions of Italy.

What they all have in common is a peasant origin and the use of day-old bread, upcycled into a new, filling, seasonal recipe.

Now let's do a roundup of the most fascinating recipes I found for preparing other types of bread salad from cucina povera: Panzanella romana, Acquasale in Puglia, cold Cialledda in Matera and ciaudella in Abruzzo, and finally Cundigiun and capponada in Liguria.

A panzanella in Rome

Rome and Lazio have their own version of panzanella. Aldo Fabrizi (1905-1990), a Roman actor, director, screenwriter, and comedian, who was equally passionate about Roman cuisine, composed also poems in Roman dialect about his favourite dishes. Obviously, there’s one about panzanella, too.

E che ce vo’ pe’ fa’ la panzanella? Nun è ch’er condimento sia un segreto, oppure è stabbilito da un decreto, però ‘a qualità dev’esse quella.
In primise: acqua fresca de cannella, in secondise: ojo d’uliveto, e come terzo: quer divino aceto che fa veni’ ‘a febbre magnerella. Pagnotta paesana un po’ intostata, cotta all’antica, co’ la crosta scura, bagnata fino a che nun s’è ammollata. In più, pe’ un boccone da signori, abbasta rifini’ la svojatura co’ basilico, pepe e pommidori.

Making panzanella is as easy as pie. The seasoning is not a secret, nor it has been established by decree, but you must use high-quality ingredients. First of all, fresh tap water, second, extra virgin olive oil from an olive grove, and third, vinegar, that mouthwatering vinegar that makes you crave more food. A day-old country bread loaf, baked as they used to do in the old times, with a dark crust, soaked until soft. To make a dish fit for a king, add fresh basil, pepper, and tomatoes.

Rosita’s acquasale. Picture by Rosita Tondo

Puglia. Meet the acquasale

When we were driving south to visit Tommaso’s family in Lecce, we stopped at Antichi Sapori, Pietro Zito’s restaurant in Montegrosso, near Castel del Monte. It has been my favourite restaurant since the first time I had the chance to try Pietro Zito’s local, simple, seasonal food about 15 years ago. One of the (many) appetizers we had was a tiny bowl with the freshest, moving, mind-blowing acquasale. Acquasale is the Apulian take on panzanella, and to talk about it I asked Rosita Tondo a few questions.

We met when I was teaching an online food writing class, and she won my heart with her essay on acquasale, a dish that holds a very special place in her childhood memories.

Which is the best season for acquasale? 
Certainly the season when it is consumed most is summer. But there are seasonal variations, depending on what the countryside provides. At the end of summer, for example, acquasale it dressed with agrest, unripe grape juice, and sometimes you can also add the most tender tendrils. Some people add purslane, too. You should have found a clump of it at Pietro Zito's (indeed it was there!). But you can also add oranges or lemons when in season.

Could you guide us though the essential ingredients of acquasale?
Let's start with the fundamental one: soft wheat bread, with a thick crust, because Apulia is not just semolina bread. It must be stale, almost dry, cut into  large cubes. If you can get a hold of a sourdoughloaf, even better.
Tomatoes. Big, not too ripe, very firm tomatoes cut into pieces. I don't know what the Apulian ones are called in Italian. So I'll give you some tips on the most common tomatoes: costoluto, camone, cuore di bue. I would avoid ciliegini and datterini. I might pass on piccadilly [read more about the different varieties of tomatoes here].
Cucumbers. Fundamentally, caroselli, as you may have seen, differ in texture and flavour from ordinary cucumbers.
Onion. Red. Sliced. You can find Tropea onions everywhere nowadays, but in Puglia they often use Acquaviva onions, which are very sweet.
Herbs. Dried oregano. Freshly sfraganato, that is, crushed at the moment. And I already mentioned purslane. 
Extra virgin olive oil. Our Apulian oil, even better if from Coratina olives, quite intense and spicy. 
Vinegar. Forbidden! That's the big difference with Tuscan panzanella. 

And tell us about the prepatation.
Here you can find another big difference with the Tuscan panzanella. While for panzanella the bread is soaked beforehand, for acquasale you have to make a kind of cold soup. In a soup dish, you layer water, salt, and olive oil in the bottom, then you add all the vegetables, and finish with the cubed bread. The bread may not get all soaked and there will be an alternation of textures.

Would you share a memory related to acquasale?
It is very poor dish, as you may have noticed. So poor that my grandfather, when he ate it and I asked to taste it, would say no with a stern look on his face. And he would have taken an arm off for me! But, for him, that was too poor a dish for his beloved granddaughter, who had to eat the best his table had to offer. For me, on the other hand, it was much more palatable than many other foods, since there was both bread and tomato, the main ingredients of my childhood snack.

Here you can find Rosita's recipe for acquasale.

When in Matera… Cialledda fredda

Last summer I was going thourough the menu of a restaurant in Matera suggested by my friend Angela when I spotted for the first time the term cialledda. Needless to say, I picked that immediately.

Cialledda, known also as the harvester’s breakfast, is a cold bread salad, a fresh and nourishing summer dish made with stale bread, tomatoes, fresh onion, and crumbled dried oregano. This basic version can be enriched with caroselli (just as acquasale) or cucumbers, olives, and celery. The main difference with the Apulian acquasale is the bread: here the protagonist is pane di Matera, the local semolina bread traditionally baked into very large rounds (4 to 5 kilos!) in the communal wood-burning ovens, often the only food the extremely poor people living in the Sassi - the traditional houses carved out of the rock - would afford. This bread would last for many days, and when it was too stale or dry, it was turned into cialledda. Now cialledda is one of the most representative dishes of the Matera gastronomy, served at home and in restaurants, also as a fresh appetizer.

Besides the cold version, there is also a hot cialledda, usually prepared on winter evenings, a soupy dish made with stale bread and seasonal vegetables, such as turnip greens.

---

Abruzzo, where the bread salad is called ciaudella

My friend Giulia Scappaticcio, from Casale Centurione Abruzzo, confirmed the presence of a traditional day-old bread salad in Abruzzo, too. The recipe, known as ciaudella, calls for chunks of a stale country loaf, quickly run under cold water, squeezed, and dressed with a local variety of tomatoes, Pera d’Abruzzo, so ripe they stain the bread red. Along with tomatoes, rounds of tortarello abruzzese, the local sweet, crunchy cucumber, fresh red onion, extra virgin olive oil, and a dash of vinegar. Sometimes garlic and green peppers - very common in local recipes - are also added to the ciaudella.

---

Liguria and the fishermen's bread salads

And now, for the last stop of our bread salad tour, let’s turn our attention to Liguria, and to a local type of bread, galletta del marinaio, sailors’ crackers – a dry bread that was once consumed on board vessels.

As my friend Enrica explained to me, these crackers were slightly softened with water and vinegar, and then placed at the bottom of a bowl to soak the juices of a collection of seasonal vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, red onions, and green beans. And, since this is a Ligurian recipe, picture also a shower of fresh basil leaves, Taggiasche olives, and salted anchovies. In the Italian Riviera, this bread salad is known as cundigiun. If you are curious to replicate cundigiun, you can find the recipe on Enrica’s blog.

There’s also another similar recipe, known as capponada, where sailors’ crackers are paired with preserved fish - mainly anchovies and mosciamme - sun-dried tuna fillets, now substituted with canned tuna -, tomatoes, capers, and Taggiasche olives. Here’s Enrica’s recipe for capponada, too.

How fascinating is this?

IS THERE A TYPICAL BREAD SALAD IN YOUR FAMILY REPERTOIRE, OR IN YOUR CULINARY TRADITION? I’D BE CURIOUS TO EXTEND THE EXAMPLES OF THIS BREAD SALAD ANATOMY! LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS!