• Soak the bread in the water until it is thoroughly mushy.  Strain it through a sieve, reserving the water, and squeeze it out with your hands.  Pop it in a food processor.  Run the motor and add the garlic cloves and the salt.  Blend into a paste, adding a drop more water if it is not whirling around properly.  Add the olive oil in a thin stream as the motor is running and then add the vinegar.  Scrape this paste into a big container (that can fit in your fridge) and pour on all the water.  Put it in the fridge to cool down completely.  Serve cold with a lovely garnish to make it pretty – chopped parley or chives might be nice, as would chopped melon, diced apple, grapes, mint, finely diced onion or pepper, or olives (or whatever you have on hand).

Options:

• Add the juice of 1 seville orange (they are sour)
•  Add 2 tsp paprika or 1/4 tsp cumin
• Add 100 g ground almonds
•  Top with chopped hard boiled egg and strips of serrano ham
•  Add 1 kg of wonderful ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped and/or a peeled, chopped cucumber and/or  a  peeled and chopped pepper

On Stale Bread

• Stale bread has many uses and as long as you thoroughly dry out your bread you can store it in an airtight container if you don’t want to use it straight away.  To do that, slice it up when it is getting a bit old even for toast, take the crusts off, and let it completely dry out.  If you are not sure, heat the oven up to 50 degrees C and then turn it off.  Put the sliced bread in on a cookie sheet and then simply leave it there all day/all night.  Don’t forget it’s in there or you may (as I have done) turn the oven on to do something else and land up with blackened slices of bread.  Gazpacho is traditionally made with good quality white bread.  However, I have made it with whole meal bread, sourdough bread, bread with tarragon in it…the thing is that I never throw away bread.  I have a HUGE tin for storing stale bread and whatever goes stale I dry out completely and pop in the tin.  There is all sorts in there and when I need it I just pull out a handful of assorted dry bread and use it.  Traditional it is not, delicious it is.