Tuesday 19 February 2013

Using up stale bread.

It's either feast or famine in my house, as far as bread is concerned. I am either dashing to the shops last thing at night to get bread for tomorrow's packed lunch, or I have a freezer full, and loaves sitting out going stale.

Here are a few ideas for using up stale bread;

Whiz it into crumbs in the processor, bag them up, and freeze them. They can be used for bulking out meatballs, topping a bake, baking a treacle tart, etc, etc.

Toast it. Slightly sale bread will toast well, and can also make lovely toasted sandwiches.

Bread and butter pudding. This is a really old fashioned, rib sticking pudding. Take a few slices of bread, and butter liberally. Cut, and arrange in a baking dish. Sprinkle with dried fruit ( or, alternatively, spread with jam, marmalade or chocolate spread and peanut butter). Mix an egg or two with half to one pint of milk (cream or evap would be god too), and pour over. Leave to soak for a bit, cover and bake for about thirty mins. Uncover to brown for a few mins at end, but don't let it burn.

Make a bread salad. Tear up bread into chunks, sprinkle quite generously with salad dressing, and leave to soak while you cho up tomatoes, cucumber and other assorted salad veg. Mix with the bread, and serve.

Tear into croutons, drizzle with oil and bake. Use these to top out or salad.

Make a summer fruit pudding. Use frozen berries if its not summer.

Make a war time bread pudding. Soak 10oz sale bread for ten mins in a little water, then squeeze out most of the moisture. Mix with 2oz butter, 2 oz dried fruit and 1 oz sugar, and a teaspoon or so of cinnamon. Mix in an egg, and enough milk to make it sticky. Spread out into a baking dish, and bake for about an hour. It's nice to sprinkle some sugar on top. You can serve this hot with custard, but its also nice to have a cold slice with a cuppa. You can use any dried fruit you like. It's also nice if you grate some apple, or pear, and mix that in. Since mincemeat left over from Christmas would be lovely too. You old use ginger insteadof cinnamon.

1 comment:

  1. I like the sound of the war time bread pudding, I'll be giving that a go for sure :-)

    Sue xx

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