If you bake your own bread.....

[WhatFreshHellIsThis]

....can i ask what you do with the leftover bits? We have a bread machine and although the bread is fab it goes stale really quick (no doubt due to have no crappy chemicals in it!).

What do you do with your stale loaf ends? I have been making breadcrumbs with them, but I either need some more recipes involving breadcrumbs or some alternative uses, as we now have enough breadcrumbs to crumb the whole family all over and grill them lightly.

bread freezes well, if you slice it first you can just defrost it in the toaster.

I wrap my bread tightly into a teatowel right after it comes out of the mashine. when it cooled down I put it in a wooden bread box. hardly ever goes stale, we eat one loaf in 2 days.
when first cutting we use the end slice to protect the bread from drying out.

in the winter we use the bread to feed birds (all good wholegrain with seeds).

Croutons for soups, cut into cubes and scattered over the top of casseroles then drizzled with oil and put in the oven with the lid off. Broken up an dput out for the birds.

We don't get much waste though but I don't use a breadmaker so I can make smaller loaves or rolls and puyt some in the freezer.

Thank you! We eat nearly a whole loaf in two days, but just not quite, which means there's always a little bit left.

I should cut a few slices off straight away and freeze them, shouldn't I, then I'd have emergency bread for when I've forgotten to put the machine on overnight.

That's a good plan.

Hugh FW recently did a few 'using up old recipes' on River Cottage Everyday. I think he did breadcrumb pesto, that Italian salad which involves stale bread and tomatoes and breaded fish.

I've cut mine into cubes and keep it in the freezer for croutons, breadcrumbs etc.

using up old bread recipes ....

At the weekend we tried Nigel Slater's plum crisp. It's like a crumble but with a topping made from bread crumbs instead of the crumble. It was very good.

I'm also a big fan of queen of puddings to use up breadcrumbs.

And one of my favourite quick n easy suppers is pasta with breadcrumbs.

I keep my homemade bread in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag for a week. It does not go off.

No Beta! You can't put bread in the fridge! It is wrong! Are you my dad? He insists on putting baked products in the fridge. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

fridge
plastic bag

no, doesn't go off. my mom used to do that and I hated the faint plastic taste of the bread. it also gets a funny not-nice-at-all texture (in my opinion :) )

Assuming it's wholemeal there's brown bread ice cream too.

Bread pudding is nice although not great for waistline. I like a slice with a cup of tea in the afternoon, or as a pudding with custard.

There is a good recipe on the Waitrose website I think, but you basically soak bread pieces in milk then add sultanas, sugar, mixed spice and egg then tip it all into a dish and bake it. Sprinkle with sugar when out of the oven.

You could grit the path with the stuff I've been saving. Some ace ideas here: I was going to put it out for the birds and just hope they don't injure themselves on it.

Is that last recipe basically bread and butter pudding?

usually the dogs

No not bread and butter pudding, this is bread pudding and is in no way like a soggy mess of bread in eggy custard. This is more like a slice of currant bun with mixed spice. Completely different animal.

ooooh lots of ideas here.

just read the recipe for the ice cream - nearly fainted then realised it said 'whisk and freeze for an hour' not 'whisk for an hour'!

beenbeta. You musn't put bread in the fridge because the cold does something to the gluten (must be true: Sheldon from Big Bang Theory told me)

or do you like this science-y explanation? link

mousymouse/Indith - no no no to bread in the fridge?

If I may draw your attention to exhibit A and B:

"bread freezes well, if you slice it first you can just defrost it in the toaster."

"..I can make smaller loaves or rolls and puyt some in the freezer"

What do you think a freezer is then?

Its a really really cold fridge!

It's going through the 4 degree C barrier that makes it go stale when it's put in the fridge.

Freezing to toast or to warm up in the oven is fine but bread eaten fresh out of the fridge tastes horrible!

I keep mine in one of those big lock and lock/store jobbies and it keeps it fresh for ages, and doesn't taste of plastic either.

Try making a smaller loaf more frequently, and I echo the thing on plastic bags. I heard something about letting the air get to it as good bacteria live in air and help keep the bad bacteria surpressed. If you let the CO2 build up, the bad bacteria begin to take over the asylum.....as it were.
In a tight bag in the freezer, but loosely in a bag with access to the air if out of the freezer, and out of the fridge as well (the bacteria critters behave differently according to temperature).