Panzanella feels like an ode to summer.
The classic Tuscan salad was originally created to use up stale bread, because why would you want to throw away leftover bread when you can make something delicious? It includes some sort of vinaigrette, which soaks into the stale bread (or in this recipe, baked croutons), as well as tomatoes, which lend their juices to the mix, and often onions, cucumbers and basil.
I use cherry tomatoes here, and halve them, but if you have big ripe tomatoes to cube up, definitely do that instead. Mixing different-colored tomatoes makes this dish even more visually arresting.
If you have garlic oil on hand, use that, or plain olive oil works just fine.
And if you’re making croutons instead of using stale bread, you can use any kind of bread for them. Classic panzanella features some sort of firm white bread, anything from Italian bread to ciabatta to a Pullman loaf. However, there are no rules: If you want, you can use sourdough, pumpernickel, whole grain, etc.