Stale Bread, That Versatile Vehicle This week's City Kitchen column features the Middle Eastern bread salad called fattoush, which utilizes stale pita. It's rather similar to the northern Italian bread salad panzanella, which is made from a stale country loaf. Both make use of summer salad vegetable staples: tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, all of which are still available, sweet and ripe. Actually, some versions of panzanella are quite simple, made from just tomatoes, onion and basil, moistened with vinegar and drizzled with olive oil. But the key ingredient is old bread. All wheat-eating cultures have for centuries devised delicious ways to use stale bread, and not only as a means of frugal sustenance. It is considered wanton and wasteful to do otherwise; after all, a lot of effort has gone into transforming wheat into flour and flour into loaves. Aside from bread crumbs and croutons, there are myriad soups, puddings both sweet and savory, dumplings and stuffings that take advantage of stale bread. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you have an hour or so to spare, try Googling "stale bread recipes." You'll find thousands of examples. Share your suggestions for using stale bread here.