Panzanella, A Salad of Tuscany

This salad is a specialty of Florence (Italian: Firenze), the capital city of Tuscany in Italy. Tuscany is a region of northwestern Italy famous for "Chianti" wine. The salad provides a good use for stale bread, especially for bread without all the preservatives, which gets stale after only a day or two. This is, of course, my own version of the salad.   

INGREDIENTS:

5 Roma tomatoes, cut into chunks/diced, or about 15 to 20 grape tomatoes, halved
1 1/2 cups bake shop Italian bread, dried for a day or two, or toasted, then torn into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
10 basil leaves, torn into smaller pieces
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil + 3 tablespoons more for the bread pieces
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Toss the bread pieces with the 3 tablespoons of oil. Put the bread pieces on a foil or parchment covered baking sheet and bake at 400 (F) for about 5 to 6 minutes, then let the bread pieces cool a bit. Mix the tomatoes, onions, basil leaves and bread pieces together. Mix the oil and red wine vinegar together, pour over the salad, then add salt and pepper. The oil and vinegar amounts are just a guideline, but I like more dressing on salad than perhaps some people, so use what you like. In Italy they trim the crusts from the bread, but I don't care, I do it my own way, although a funny thing happened then. A letter came from the Italian embassy asking me if I have seen the "Godfather" movies. I replied, "Only the first one." They answered with simply, "That's enough." What the hell's that supposed to mean?  hahaha

WORD HISTORY:
Tomato-This now common word goes back to Aztecan (Nahuatl) "tomatl." Spanish borrowed the word, as "tomate" from their colonial expansion in the New World in the 1500s. English borrowed the word from Spanish in the mid 1700s. There are two "general" pronunciations, even made somewhat famous in a popular song written by George Gershwin called, "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," where the pronunciation differences were emphasized in one line. "Generally" speaking, Americans "tend" to pronounce the word as if, "toe-may-toe" (which actually often comes out like, "tum-ay-tah"). British pronunciation tends to be more like, "toe-mah-toe," with the "a" pronounced like the "a" of father. When I was younger, some Americans pronounced the word in the British style, but to be honest, that is quite rare in the U.S. anymore, at least in my experience, and I would say it would be considered a bit "high brow," if not downright "snobbish," nowadays.