Quick and yummy oven roasted Panzanella

Panzanella is an Italian salad consisting of huge dried bread croutons and veggies. The idea is to toast your day old bread, (or a baguette you just bought) and use it as a base to feature season ripe produce. What I did was use ho-hum Roma tomatoes which I seasoned liberally with salt, pepper olive oil, and a thinly sliced shallot and roasted them along side one inch diced up pieces of a whole wheat french loaf that was also liberally seasoned. The result, FANASTICO!! It makes a super hearty side dish, and would obviously take the place of needing a bread with your meal. ENJOY!

Pre-heat your oven to a whopping 425, the idea is to toast your bread and caramelize the tomatoes and shallots.
1 loaf of french bread, I prefer whole wheat for this.
1 large shallot
6-8 Roma tomatoes, or other tomatoes as you prefer, even cherry
2 & 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic powder
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup of finely chopped fresh parsley

Dice your tomatoes into fairly large pieces, approx 1 inch pieces, they should be roughly the same size as the bread cubes. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Next, thinly slice the shallot into rounds and toss with the oiled and seasoned tomatoes. Set aside in a bowl while the bread is being prepared.

Cube up the loaf into 1 inch pieces and place into a large bowl and toss with the remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the garlic powder and the salt and pepper to taste and lightly toss all the ingredients in the bowl together to evenly distribute the the seasonings. At this point you can taste one of the bread cubes and decide if you need to add more salt and pepper.

Place the bread cubes onto a large sheet tray first then add the tomatoes, shallot mixture onto the sheet tray. Pop the tray into the oven and in about 5 minutes check the progress. You are looking for a toasted effect on the bread (color means flavor, yum) and for the tomatoes and shallots to be just caramelized. This will all happen quickly in a matter of no more than 15 minutes if the oven was pre-heated.

Pull out the tray and dump the salad into a large bowl and toss with the chopped parsley and last, enjoy!