How to Eat All the Bread

Ideas for cooking every last crumb

In the US, almost a third of bread goes to waste. Don’t let your bread become a statistic! Give excess or stale bread a second chance at your table, save money and reduce methane emissions while eating delicious food.

Americans are not alone

Revive the bread

Douse stale bread with water and heat it up to soften it. Put the crust directly under a running tap—yes, directly under!—to get it sopping wet, while avoiding the cut edges. Place the wet bread in a 300°F oven for about 7 minutes. (If you accidentally soaked the cut sides, leave the bread in the oven for a few more minutes.) The water will turn into steam inside the oven, which transforms your bread from stale back to scrumptious.

Make croutons

Cube stale bread and toss in olive oil, salt and, if desired, garlic powder. (Use about 1 tablespoon of oil for every 2 slices of bread.) Bake for up to 10 minutes at 400°F until golden and crunchy. If you’d like less crunchy croutons, bake for only 5 minutes or so. Be sure to keep an eye on these so they don’t burn. Once cool, store in a glass jar for a day or two if you don’t eat them all immediately.

Make stuffing

Stuffing has no season. You don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving to cook it and you don’t need a bird to stuff it into. Make it any time. Slice several pieces of bread, cube the slices and spread the cubes on a cookie sheet. Cover with another inverted cookie sheet and let sit for a day or two until stale. (Or toast it in the oven at 300°F for about 10 minutes if you need to dry it out in a hurry.)

To make the stuffing, sauté onions and celery in fat, add ground sage and savory, salt and pepper, stir in bread cubes and add enough broth to moisten the mixture. You can also add nuts or orzo or dried cranberries. Bake in a covered dish or small Dutch oven at 350°F for 35 minutes. Remove the cover and bake an additional 10 minutes until the top is golden.

Brew kvass

This classic Ukrainian fermented drink calls for rye bread and tastes something like water kefir. You can either make it with sourdough starter to kickstart the fermentation or with dry yeast.

Make french toast

You can eyeball french toast ingredients but here is the basic idea: For two slices of stale bread, whisk together an egg, a couple of tablespoons of milk, a splash of vanilla and a dash of cinnamon in a pie plate (a shallow dish results in evenly coated bread). Next, dip in the slices of stale bread one or two at a time to soak up egg mixture, turn the slices over to saturate the other sides and fry in butter until golden. I like to eat mine topped with either maple syrup or powdered sugar and lemon juice. For a vegan version, this recipe from Love & Lemons looks good.

Make bread pudding

Turn a stale loaf into a rich, creamy dessert. I included a recipe for Mexican Hot Chocolate Bread Pudding in my cookbook. You’ll look forward to having stale loaves on hand after tasting it!

Soften a brick of brown sugar

Put a slice of bread in a jar or bag of brown sugar that has turned into a rock formation. Make sure you use bread that isn’t completely stale—it needs to contain moisture for this trick to work. The dry sugar will draw out that moisture and transform the brick into scoopable sugar. And the sugar-covered bread is a nice little treat too.

Make breadcrumbs

At the end of a catered event I spoke at in the spring, a large bowl of toasted bread slices sat on a cart, about to be rolled away by the cleanup crew and disposed of. Luckily, I had a clean and roomy produce bag in my bag and so I stuffed it with a bunch of bread. At home, I quickly blitzed the bread into breadcrumbs in my blender and stored them in jars in the freezer. (If I have only a slice or two of dried out bread, I’ll grate it up with a cheese grater.)

I love having breadcrumbs on hand to use as filler for nutloaf or bean burgers, to make homemade pasta, for topping savory dishes after sautéing in olive oil and garlic (see below) and more.

(Go here for detailed instructions to make bread crumbs.)

Make garlicky breadcrumbs

Now that you have breadcrumbs, sauté them in a little garlic-infused fat for a crunchy topping to sprinkle on savory dishes such as pasta, salads and vegetable sides. Go here for the full recipe.

Make apple brown betty

An apple brown betty is similar to an apple crumble but instead of adding a crumbly oat and nut topping, you alternate layers of sliced apples with layers of butter-drenched breadcrumbs. (I haven’t tried making a vegan version with coconut oil, but I think that would work well.) Swap out one of the apples in the recipe for a peach or large piece of rhubarb.

Apple brown betty

No-Waste Apple Brown Betty

• 5 slices of day old bread, cubed

• 6 tablespoons butter, melted (85 grams)

• 5 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced (2 pounds or 908 grams before peeling and coring)

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (30 ml), about 1 lemon, plus zest

• 2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla

• 3/4 cup (165 g) packed light brown sugar

• 2 teaspoons (10 ml) ground cinnamon

• 1/2 teaspoon (5 ml) kosher salt

1. Place bread cubes in a food processor or high speed blender and process until coarse.

2. Preheat the oven to 375°F. As the oven heats up, toast the breadcrumbs on a cookie sheet until slightly golden and crisp, between 5 and 10 minutes. Mix the melted butter and toasted breadcrumbs in a medium bowl.

3. In a large bowl, toss the apple slices in lemon juice, zest and vanilla.

4. In a medium bowl, mix the brown sugar, cinnamon and salt.

5. Place half the apples across the bottom of a deep pie dish in an even layer. Spread half the brown sugar mixture evenly over the apples, followed by half the breadcrumbs. Spread the remaining apples in another layer, followed by the remaining brown sugar mixture and finally, the remaining breadcrumbs.

6. Cover and bake for 40 minutes. (I invert a metal cake pan over the dish to cover it.) Remove the cover and continue to bake for another 8 to 10 minutes or until the breadcrumbs have turned golden-brown and the apples have softened.

Note: Save apples peels to brew apple scrap vinegar or fruit scrap soda.

I have listed here just some ideas to use up all the bread. Please leave a comment below with your favorite ways to keep bread from going to waste. And thanks for reading!

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I was in Better Homes & Gardens this month as an “eco-warrior.” Go here for the magazine’s full list of 2024 stylemakers. (See the magazine for the longer writeup.)

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