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Everyone loves bread, but if you don’t eat it fast enough, it can get stale or grow mold. If you live alone or just don’t want to eat a whole loaf of bread quickly, you are almost guaranteed to throw some away…or are you?
With a little bit of planning, you can use up that leftover bread in ways you may have never thought possible. By following most of these tips, you can decrease your chances of throwing that loaf away.
Note: Most of these tips work best for fresh, artisan loaves, not bagged varieties like Wonder Bread, although you are welcome to try any of these methods of preservation with whatever you happen to have.
Make Breadcrumbs
This is perhaps the best use of old bread. Breadcrumbs made from scratch using good bread are much better than the ground powder you get when you buy those cans of seasoned breadcrumbs in the bread aisle. As a bonus, you can control the size of the crumb.
Put day old bread in a food processor and pulse until you have crumbs that are the desired texture. You can cut the crusts off or not; that’s up to you.
Store fresh breadcrumbs in an airtight container or freezer bag in your freezer. They’ll last for several months or longer. You can simply buy a loaf of bread specifically for this purpose and replenish it as you run out of crumbs in the freezer.
Make a Salad
Don’t throw out that half a baguette you didn’t get to eat. Instead, make a quick and easy bread salad. Cut the bread in cubes, and toss it with tomatoes, red onions, cucumbers, and oil and vinegar. Add some fresh herbs, salt and pepper and let marinate for an hour or so in the fridge. Add some fresh mozzarella or shaved Parmesan if you’d like, and you’ve got a quick, flavorful salad that makes the most of leftovers.
This works best with crusty bread that will soak up the dressing and vegetables juices without turning to mush. Soft sweet bread will make a gummy salad that probably won’t be as enjoyable.
Make a Dessert
Bread pudding is an obvious choice; this classic dessert simply involves pouring a custard base over slices of day old bread and baking. You can also make grilled sandwiches with fruit and a chocolate spread like Nutella.
Make Croutons
Don’t buy overly salty, super hard, boxed croutons for your salad. Instead, simply cube bread that’s slightly stale, toss with olive oil and herbs and lay on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake at 400 degrees until crisp. Allow to cool, and revel in the difference homemade makes.
You can do this with fresh bread, but your croutons may not be quite as crisp as you like. However, they’ll still be infinitely better than store bought.
Thicken a Soup
Bread is the perfect thickener for a soup like a gazpacho or hearty bean soup. The starch makes it perfect, and if used in a hot soup, adds a velvety, almost creamy texture, without using milk or cream.
Add it to Burgers or Meatloaf
Soak day old bread in milk and use it to bulk up burgers or meatloaf. This is especially good if you’re feeding a crowd on a budget; it will keep your meat costs down. You can also use fresh breadcrumbs without soaking if you’d like.
Make a Better Grilled Cheese
Bread that is slightly stale will crisp up much better than just baked bread. Of course, it’s better to use a good, hearty sourdough than plain old wonder bread, but any slightly stale bread will always make a better grilled cheese.
If you know you’re going to be making grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch or dinner, you can slice your bread and let it sit in the counter for a few hours before hand or even overnight to speed up the process. The air surrounding the slices will dry it out a bit for a much crisper sandwich. Make sure you slice your bread before doing this if it’s not already sliced, and turn the bread after a couple hours to dry out both sides.
Make the Best French Toast
Bread that is soft and fresh can turn to mush when you dip it in your French toast batter, but bread that is slightly stale will soak it up much better. If you’re going to be making French toast in the morning, letting your sliced bread sit out on the counter overnight will make a huge difference in the texture of your finished dish.
Use it Instead of Pasta or Rice
You can use stale bread in place of pasta or rice in dishes like soup or stew, since it is basically a similar starch. Don’t try this with fresh bread; the minute you pour a hot stew on top of it, fresh bread will turn mushy and gummy. The best bread for this is a crusty loaf that is slightly stale.
Make it Fresh Again
What do you do if you want to enjoy a slice of crusty bread with your soup or pasta, but it’s slightly stale? Don’t throw it out! Instead, sprinkle it with water and pop it in a 350-degree oven to refresh it. It only takes about 5 minutes, and you’ll be amazed at how fresh it tastes. This works best with something crusty like French bread or a baguette.
Freeze It
If you think ahead a bit, you can save your bread from going stale before it actually does by popping it in the freezer. Almost all bread freezes beautifully, and when you take it out, it will taste just like new.
This works best with bread that is already sliced using a good quality serrated bread knife, but you can freeze a whole loaf if you’d like. If you freeze a whole loaf, you just have to remember to remove it from the freezer in plenty of time for the whole thing to defrost, which may take longer than you think.
The freezer is also a good place to store bread if you simply aren’t going to eat it fast enough. You can remove a slice or two and toast it or thaw in the microwave for a sandwich, and you’ll never throw away a moldy loaf again.
To keep your bread fresher longer, never store it in the refrigerator, and if you have the ability to slice it yourself, you should always do it so that you have the ability to control how much you use at a time. A whole loaf will always last longer than one that is sliced.
Conclusion
Like most foods, bread doesn’t last forever. If your bread is so hard you can’t press into it or break it with your hands, it’s probably past its prime. If it has mold, you definitely want to throw it out no matter how soft it is. Bread that is a few days old is definitely useful for a lot of things, but any older than that, and it becomes useless. The key to using up bread is being realistic about how much you can eat, and planning for the slices that you aren’t going to eat. If you get your bread at a bakery or specialty store, ask if they make smaller loaves or even if you can buy a half loaf. Even though it’s not terribly expensive, throwing away food is hard for anyone.