♪♪ Today, we're making a peach and heirloom tomato panzanella salad and it's a great way to use these ingredients when they're at their peak in the summertime, but in a slightly different way than maybe you have before.

A panzanella salad is an Italian dish that came about as a way to use day-old bread.

So, I'm just going ahead and slicing up this bread.

Actually, it doesn't really have to be a day old.

You can do what I'm doing now, which is toast the bread.

The drier it is, the more of those flavors it'll soak up.

What I'm looking for is about three cups total.

Now, I'll put them on a baking sheet.

So, it's going in plain like this.

I don't want them to start browning.

I just want them to dry out.

While the bread is toasting, let's make the dressing for this salad.

To get started, you'll need a cup of shallot oil- not typically something you can find in the grocery store, but something you can make really easily at home.

Here's how.

All you need is one cup of olive oil and three shallots.

Start by thinly slicing your shallots.

My favorite and the fastest way to do this is with a mandoline.

Once the shallots are sliced, it's time to fry.

Add the olive oil to a frying pan over medium high heat.

You can check to see if the oil is ready by adding a sliced shallot and seeing if it sizzles right away.

If it doesn't, wait a couple of minutes and try again.

Add the rest of the sliced shallots and use a slotted spoon or spatula to make sure they're all covered.

While the shallots cook, stay close to the pan.

It really only takes a few seconds to go from golden brown to burnt.

When they're crisp and golden, transfer the shallots to a paper towel for draining and reserve the now shallot-flavored oil for the dressing.

To this bowl, I'll add half a cup of lemon juice.

I have sherry vinegar here, I'll do a quarter cup of that.

A tablespoon and a half of balsamic vinegar, which is sweeter than sherry vinegar.

Of course, we want to keep balancing this out with some honey, some salt, and pepper.

Now, we'll start to drizzle in our shallot oil.

There are lots of ways to mix a dressing to get it emulsified, so all the ingredients come together as one.

But I find that this is just the most consistent way to do it- slowly drizzling in.

Our bread is toasted.

Our dressing is done.

Now, we just need to put together this salad.

The stars of our dish are the peaches and tomatoes that are in peak season right now.

And what I find is that oftentimes, especially when you're making something like a salad, ingredients that are at their peak in season just naturally go together really well.

So, peaches and tomatoes are a beautiful pairing.

Now, let's get into those heirloom tomatoes.

So, here, we'll use a little bit of that one.

I also have a gorgeous yellow heirloom tomato here.

♪♪ To add even more brightness to this dish, I'm adding a few different herbs here.

I have basil, and I love adding mint to my salads, and some chives.

You can mix it up, use whatever herbs you might have on hand.

Even parsley goes really nicely in this salad, but I love this combination of mint, basil and chives.

I'm going to add about half of that dressing we prepared.

We'll give it a toss and then I'll let it sit for about 10 minutes.

The bread will really start to soak up that dressing, and then any residual juices that start to release from those tomatoes and even those peaches.

And in our final step, I'll add four ounces of fresh baby arugula and get it coated with all those juices.

The more this sits, the more the tomatoes and the peaches start to release their juices and that's a good thing.

We want that.

And now, a couple final ingredients that really make this dish.

Burrata, this is a very soft mozzarella cheese.

And finally, we have the crispy shallots from when we made that shallot oil.

We'll sprinkle them right on top.

This is our nice textural crunch to this dish.

How beautiful is that?

This is our Peach and Tomato Panzanella Salad.

And now, all that's left to do is eat!

♪♪