Give your wonderful home made bread a second chance!
What to do with left-over bread? There are smart and tasty and surprising ways to use up old bread. These are a few of our favorites:
- You can revive stale bread by dipping it in water and baking it at 175ºC / 350ºF degrees for 7-10 minutes. You can do this ones, because your bread will still dry out from this exercise.
- Make bread crumbs. Whisk them in a blender, maybe add some seasonings, and keep in an airtight container in the fridge.
- Make croutons. Sauté stale bread cubes in plenty of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. I like adding finely chopped rosemary.
- Make bruschetta. Perfect as a snack or appetizer. See recipe below
- Bread soups. Use stale bread to thicken sauces, soups, and stews (think Italian ‘Papa al Pomodoro’ with tin tomatoes, stale bread, basil and garlic)
- French toast. For me there has to be cinnamon and maple syrup. What about filling it with brie and covering it with berries and powdered sugar?
- Just make toast and eat with fresh butter
- Make toasties/grilled sandwiches (see our 10 hot toasty ideas)
- Bread puddings. Popular in many cuisines, like British, French and Mexican. They come in sweet and savory variations.
- Although it seems a good idea, do NOT feed it to the ducks. You do not do them any favor, rather the opposite (read more)
Italian bruschetta, my favorite way to give stale bread a second chance!
Simple recipe for Italian bruschetta with tomato
Grill your stale bread under a hot grill and rub with garlic. Take fresh or canned tomatoes and slice them . In a bowl, add fresh basil to the tomatoes. Add olive oil and season with salt and black pepper, to taste. Top the grilled bread with spoonfuls of the mixture and serve immediately. You can also add some slices of mozzarella and return the bread to the grill for a minute and let it melt.
Variation: Sauté some chopped canned tomatoes in olive oil, season them and serve with fresh basil. Or, if you have some more time, you can slow roast tomatoes in the oven and use them as topping. Variations on toppings: red pepper, sun blushed tomato, vegetables, beans, cured meat or cheese.
The tradition of the bruschetta stems from the Italian olive growers. As olives are taken to the local mill for pressing in November and December, growers take some country bread with them. On a small fireplace in the corner of the pressing room, the grower toasts a bit of the bread on the fire to sample the oil with.
Baguette Dumplings
Another good stale bread recipe I saw recently was shown on a cookery program. Baguette dumplings made with stale baguettes.
For the dumplings you take 200 g stale baguette or other bread with crust. You mix it with 250 ml milk, one egg, some chopped herbs of choice, nutmeg, salt and pepper and a tablespoon of flour.
You form the mixture into balls and fry them in some butter until golden brown. A bit like savory French toast.
What’s your favorite way or favorite recipe to use up stale bread?
Bill in UK says
For a book full (half a book full anyway) of recipes with day old bread try Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. Tartine is his bakery in San Francisco which is apparently pretty popular.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Bill,
Yes we have the Tartine Bread book and it is very inspirational. I will take a look at the day old bread bit again, because I’d forgotten about that.
What is your favorite way to use up old bread?
Happy baking wknd!
Marieke
Bill in UK says
No baking this weekend as am on a business trip in California. May make a visit to Tartine while I am here. I still haven’t really mastered his bread though! I am very lazy with left over bread and to be honest some of it gets thrown out in our house. I think good sourdough toast with my wife’s home made jam takes a lot of beating and to my mind sourdough actually makes better toast a few days old.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Bill,
Hope you are able to visit! Ed has made the Tartine bread with good result but it is a lot of work and not a staple with our weekend baking because the effort and results with other recipes are a bit more balanced so to speak. Our ways of using up stale bread are mostly toast and bruschetta and with brioche it’s bread & butter pudding. But most of the bread stays in the freezer and we take out what we want to eat. Our big advantage is we normally ‘bake to order’ so we know how much to bake and not much goes to waste 🙂