Tuesday, December 9, 2008

How to Use Stale Bread in Your Recipes

By KC Kudra

Do you often find stale loaves of bread left over which you have completely forgotten about before opening a new pack? Maybe nobody in your house likes to eat the heel ends of the bread and it usually gets thrown out with the trash. Whichever the reason, you don't have to be wasteful and throw these pieces of bread away. There are plenty of ways to use up stale bread and many of them are truly mouthwatering. Some of the best crockpot recipes, such as chicken crockpot recipes, are great when made with stale bread.

There are a few general uses for the unwanted pieces of bread, which we can look at first. If you just have some small pieces left over, you can bake them in the oven over a low heat to dry them out. Then you can crush them with a rolling pin or grind them in a meat grinder.

This is a great way to make your own breadcrumbs for things like fried scallops or stuffing, without needing to resort to buying from the store. You will also find that if you have larger whole pieces, you can cut them into neat squares and dry them into croutons or crackers for soup. They can be a great deal tastier than regular crackers, and you might find yourself doing this whether the bread is stale or not!

As well as trying your hand at crockpot soup recipes and other easy crockpot recipes, another thing you can do with stale bread is to dip it into hot salted water and brown it on a well-buttered griddle. This recipe is ideal for a cold morning when you only have dry bread in the house and you want a warming dish with butter or syrup. Crockpot beef recipes are not the only way to use up stale bread.

As well as making easy crockpot recipes, you can make a great sandwich spread or side dish with your stale bread. If you are using rye bread, you will need to heat some bacon fat in the frying pan until it is hot. Then add the bread and brown both sides of it. Place a poached egg on each slice. Between the egg and the bacon fat, the bread will be moist again. You can try this recipe with barbecue sauce, catsup or another dipping sauce.

If you have a lot of stale bread to work with, consider making the delicious desert, Brown Betty. You can Layer stale bread over chopped apples in a greased baking dish, starting with the bread on the bottom and continuing until the pan is full. For every layer of apple, add cinnamon and brown sugar, more if the apples are very tart, and put breadcrumbs on the top mixed with some butter. Cook covered at first and then bake for an hour, and you will find that this dish is delicious with a gentle covering of confectioner's sugar or ice cream.

As you can see, there are plenty of uses for stale bread, so take some time, and think about how you can use those hard-as-glass slices in crockpot recipes! - 16463

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