Smart Tip: Freeze Your Stale Baguettes and Crusty Bread
Homemade breadcrumbs on your own timeline
My freezer tends to look like the island of lost toys. It’s where things get thrown for me to deal with later: Bags of leek or celery tops for veggie stock, overripe black bananas for banana bread, and freezer bags of chicken carcasses for chicken stock. A freezer bag with baguette ends and stale crusty bread has a spot in the door. Right next to them, you’ll see a quart of homemade breadcrumbs.
There are certain things I always store in the freezer:
+ Nuts for baking. They will last much longer. Especially in Houston’s hot climate!
+ Dried fruit for baking, like cranberries or currants.
+ My smoothie add-ins: Hemp hearts, flaxseed, chia seeds, cacao. It extends their shelf life and keeps them fresh. Anything with natural oils will go rancid or stale faster if stored in the pantry.
+ Breadcrumbs. They last longer and stay fresher.
Once ready to deal with the stale and discarded pieces of bread, I preheat the oven to 400 or 425 and put the bread on a sheet pan. If you haven’t done this yet, calibrate your oven (call an appliance repair person to schedule it) or pop an oven thermometer in there to ensure accuracy. For instance, some ovens set to 400 are only 375 inside.
Let’s get into the details!
You can use almost any type of bread: sourdough, whole wheat, white, whole grain, baguettes, etc. Older, dried-out bread works perfectly. Be careful about keeping seeded bread or anything with nuts in a separate container, just in case you might be feeding someone with a nut allergy.
Once the oven is hot, add the bread to a sheet pan and bake for 30–40 minutes until completely dried out.
Transfer bread to a food processor and process on high for 30 seconds for coarse breadcrumbs or 1 minute for fine breadcrumbs. Sometimes, pieces of bread are too soft to purée into crumbs. Return them to a sheet pan, toast in the oven for 10–15 minutes, then purée again.
Allow breadcrumbs to completely cool on the sheet pan for 10–15 minutes. Transfer to an airtight container to store; I keep mine in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Equipment
+ My favorite sheet pans. I use these for everything from roasting to baking and setting up ingredient trays for cooking classes.
+ A food processor with the blade attachment
+ Quart containers and masking tape or labels
If you’re a subscriber, join the chat so we can talk it out!
