By the author of What to Eat When You’re Broke
If you bake your own bread or buy it from a bakery, you know that fresh bread doesn’t last as long as the squishy, factory-bagged grocery store offerings. That’s because it’s not loaded with preservatives, additives, and softeners. The regular use of fresh bread almost guarantees one thing: stale bread.
Marie’s article on making your own breadcrumbs got me thinking about this.My daughter works at an upscale Italian restaurant and she regularly brings home fresh bread, and I simply cannot keep up with it. If I made breadcrumbs from all of it, I’d soon be able to build a house with all the crumbs!
So how else can you use up your bread once it’s past peak deliciousness? Here are some ideas you may like.
Seven ways to use stale bread
Here are some ideas you might like for using up stale bread. First, it’s important to catch the bread while it’s still simply stale. Once it’s moldy, I’m not personally too keen on using it. I generally toss my bread into the freezer after a few days so that it doesn’t get beyond the point where I can use it.
Chicken and dressing
This is one of my most common uses. In a trick I learned from my sweet mother-in-law, I keep an old ice cream bucket in the freezer with odds and ends of bread. Crusts that have been cut off, bread that was about to go stale, dinner rolls, and the like can all go into the bucket.
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Whenever I’m going to make roasted chicken (or even roasted chicken pieces), I pull out the bucket and lay the bread on a baking sheet in a single layer. I pop this in the oven for an hour or so at about 200 degrees to thoroughly dry it out. If I didn’t have pets, I’d just lay the baking sheet out and let it get to the right stage of staleness.Then I chop it up and turn it into dressing (in the South) or stuffing (in the North.) Just use the bread bits in your own favorite recipe. Your family will be certain they accidentally stumbled into a holiday dinner!
Bread pudding
My friend Scott loves bread pudding and has tried many different recipes for it. He says that stale bread soaks up the liquid better. While he tends to improvise his recipe, you might like this one. It doesn’t have any expensive or exotic ingredients and you probably already have everything you need on hand.
Really, this is like a bowl of French toast. (Which, of course, is another use for stale bread.) You can even drizzle some maple syrup on top of your pudding!
Make your own “stovetop stuffing” mix
This is another awesome use for odds and ends of bread in your freezer bucket. I find this is best done in a dehydrator for efficiency – using the oven all day will heat up your house and use a fair bit of power. Dice your bread up into small, uniform pieces and thoroughly dehydrate it. When it’s done, put it in a large bowl and add dehydrated onion flakes, sage, salt, pepper, and celery seed. You can also use Poultry Seasoning.
Toss everything well and store it in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. When it comes time to use it, I like 1/2 cup of broth and a tsp of butter to 2 cups of stuffing mix. Bring the broth/butter to a boil, then remove it from the heat and stir in the mix. Let it sit for about five minutes, and you’re good to go. (My “secret” ingredient to add in is dried cranberries. YUM!)
Croutons
Cut your bread into 1/2-inch to 1-inch cubes, based on your preferences. Toss it in olive oil and sprinkle it with your favorite seasonings. (I like garlic and onion powder, paprika, and a teeny pinch of salt.)
Spread it on a baking sheet and bake it at 375 degrees, stirring regularly. Let them cool completely before putting them in a jar for storage.
Rusks
This isn’t my favorite use, but people in Greece seem to LOVE it. There, a lot of restaurants used “rusks” as the base of dishes like pasta or salad. A rusk is a piece of twice-baked bread, usually made from yesterday’s loaf. They generally have some olive oil and garlic on top. They’re so popular that you can even get them packaged.
Fried bread
I started making this when I lived in Montenegro in an apartment that had no toaster and no oven. Simply slather butter on both sides of your bread and pop it in the frying pan as though you’re making a grilled cheese. Get each side lightly browned for a crisp, delicious outside and a soft center.
Grilled sandwiches
Something in one of my European apartments was a small grill that is used for making toast or for making grilled sandwiches. You assemble your sandwich, add butter or olive oil to the outside of the bread, and smash it together in a preheated grill for about five minutes.
It’s tasty, warm, and so much more satisfying than a cold sandwich. I think it should be the law that all grilled sandwiches contain cheese to get gooey and delicious, don’t you?
What about you?
Do you have any uses for stale bread that aren’t listed here? Do you make your own bread or buy fresh bread? What do you do with it when it’s past peak perfection?
Let’s discuss stale bread in the comments section!
5 Responses
My favorite use is in a breakfast casserole. Cubed bread on the bottom topped by whatever you want – ham, peppers, onions are the best – over which your pour a mixture of eggs and milk and topped by shredded cheddar. It stands in the refrigerator overnight giving the bread a chance to absorb the liquid then baked for 30-45 minutes in the morning. Easy and delicious company breakfast.
While not everyone will have pets or livestock, stale bread makes an excellent pill pocket & an occasional treat. I buy marked down bread, rolls, tortillas at our local grocery. I use a slice or two of the bread or a couple of tortillas, sprinkle herbs for my chickens on them & place in their feeding areas. I can add a spritz of essential oil if we are treating something specific & need a stronger version.
My goats think bread is a wonderful treat! And if I am needing them to take a capsule or powder, a small roll, part of a slice of bread or half of a tortilla makes a great pill pocket.
Finally, if the dog has possibly ingested plastic, bone shards, wood, glass or metal, feeding a slice or two of bread will help coat the foreign object & protect the whole digestive system as the foreign body (hopefully) exits. Learned this one while working for my veterinarian in CA.
I do not generally eat a lot of bread. I prefer a lettuce wrap, because I just don’t like it. However, I am a big lover of bread pudding, which is my go-to dessert when I am grilling something outside. Butter a heavy cast iron pan, scatter with bread, cranberries, and maybe dried or diced apples, then add your “custard” of eggs, milk, brown sugar and cinnamon and a pinch of salt, then put it on a cool part of the grill while everyone is enjoying the main course. Rotate occasionally to ensure one part doesn’t burn while the rest stays raw.
I have a friend who made a savory bread pudding with Swiss chard or other greens, cheese, and egg custard minus the sugar with added savory seasonings. You can add cooked sausage into this and it makes a pretty nice meal.
You can also use the diced stale bread tossed with butter or olive oil and garlic seasoning/salt to top casseroles or use a whole slice on your French onion soup. You can use the chunks or crumbs to thicken stews or soups. I love the idea of Rusks! Never had it, but I like the idea.
I just read that people also use stale bread crumbs as a binder for meatballs and sausage, and it reminded me of my venison meatballs where I often used shredded wheat cereal as a binder. Why not bread crumbs? I should have mentioned that the first time.
Great article! btw if you want to save electricity use a dehydrator to make the croutons. I put them in at night and by morning they are done! I’ve used one that has a temp control and one that doesn’t. Either way they turn out great! My MIL eats them as a snack. 🙂