Bread. A common food found in most homes up and down the land. Even those who adopt a gluten free diet now has a wider variety of specialist breads to choose from. And if you are like me, who joined thousands in learning and making homemade sourdoughs in 2020, after the banana breads have fallen off the trendy wagon, you will know what it is like to have surplus bread at home.
We eat bread, we buy bread and sometimes I make bread, but unlike the majority, we actually don’t eat much of it on a daily basis. A piece per person, toasted and spread with salted butter, then top with thick cut marmalade (my favourite and Paddington’s too), or whole nut peanut butter, or floral Scottish heather honey, or a fruit conserve or with a soft boiled egg; or omit the butter and top with the Instagram-able avocado, at breakfast is all we have. You can imagine a single loaf has quite a staying power in our home. That also means when the bread starts to lose its freshness, I have to think of ways to use it up, rather than throwing it in the food bin.
I have a few money saving ideas to share with you. Make-it-into-breadcrumbs. When you think about it, buying breadcrumbs is a false economy, especially when looking at the price for a bag. It is almost as much as a standard loaf, but the breadcrumbs are sold in, well, crumbs form, you can hardly spread on it!
Breadcrumbs are so versatile, it is the main ingredient in the traditional bread sauce to serve with roast chicken or turkey or game, like grouse. You can make a savoury crumbled topping for gratins and cassoulet; or a delicious crispy topping, Pangrattato, for pastas, risottos and stews. For this recipe, check out my earlier blog, Cupboard dinner. Or use breadcrumbs for coating before shallow or deep frying to give a satisfying crunch to chicken, pork, cheese (remember the deep fried Camembert as a standard starter in the 90s?). Another way to use it is to make a flavoursome topping for fish or pork chops and bake it in the oven. A standard fully adaptable recipe for this topping would look a bit like this:
50g salted butter
1/2 teaspoon dried red chilli flakes
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 lemon zest only
30g blanched hazelnuts or almonds, rough chopped
A small handful of curly or flat leaf parsley, picked and finely chopped (or you can mix this with oregano and thyme)
5 tablespoons breadcrumbs (about 75g)
Melt the butter in a pan on a low heat, add the chilli flakes, fennel seeds and cook till you can smell the fragrance. Take it off heat and add the lemon zest, nuts, herbs and mix. Finally stir in the breadcrumbs, and season with a pinch of salt and pepper if you like it. This is a wonderfully simple and flavourful recipe to top salmon or seared/browned pork chops before they are baked in the oven for 20-25 minutes at 170c. This quantity of topping should serve 4.
You can obviously use the less than fresh loaf for toasted sandwiches, eggy French toasts, bread and butter pudding and so on. Or you may never have stale bread at home because it just never lasts that long! But still, it is nice to have options in life and know just what you can do when the opportunity arises.
PS It was my own homemade sourdough loaf in the photo. It has taken me about 8 loaves to get to this point. And have I made more sourdoughs since? Nope, not a single loaf. Don’t get me wrong, it was very much fun and satisfying to nurture the starter and babysit the dough for a couple of days before baking. When the bread emerged from the oven, it was just glorious and made me feel like Ma Larkin, but my love affair with breadmaking has rather abruptly taken an open ended sabbatical. But never say never, you just don’t know when the mood takes me!
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