Tuscany’s solution for stale bread, panzanella, is just the start of salad solutions for stale bread. Throughout the Middle East — where fresh, thin flatbreads dry out even faster than foccacia — there’s a greener, crunchier cousin of panzanella: fattoush.
Fattoush is little more than the ubiquitous Arab salad that accompanies nearly every meal in the Middle East, a varying mix of cucumbers, radish, lettuce, tomatoes, scallions and fresh herbs. Yet two ingredients set fattoush apart — sumac and pita bread.
