A Love Hate Relationship

I love French bread. Real French bread from a real French bakery. It needs nothing but good butter to be delicious at any time of the day.

Except 24 hours after purchase. When we learn the quid-pro-quo for the delicious fresh bread. It is now dry. And a bit hard to slice.

Unless you have a large household and/or incredible foresight, the inevitable consequence of the pleasure of having fresh bread for breakfast is that you will have copious amounts of stale bread to deal with.

I find myself in the latter category, through a combination of being an enthusiastic home baker and someone lucky enough to spend a reasonable number of my weekends in the French Alps, near a wonderful bakery.

And so I have faced many a challenge of what to do with rapidly-drying bread; discounting any options of feeding it to the birds (apparently even ducks, if you can find them in the alps in January, are now gluten-free) or throwing it away.

Here are my top tips for aging bread:

Slice it thinly before it goes stale and allow to dry in a cooling oven – will be perfect with pate, smoked salmon or cheese for several days or more. Just store in an air-tight container once cool.
Make a savoury bread & not-butter pudding to use as a lunch or side dish – anywhere you would use potatoes. I made a Carrot & Swede Bread Pudding at Christmas with left-over mashed veggies. Layer up your version with flavourings of your choice – keep it simple for a side dish to an already-tasty meat or make it a meal in itself with ham, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives…anything you have to hand. Template recipe here for you to adapt.
Make a breakfast bread porridge – this recipe uses banana & spelt flakes but adapt to anything you like: Baked Banana Bread Porridge.
Cut into 1-2cm cubes and freeze – perfect for thickening soups, dipping in cheese fondue or any number of bread pudding recipes – Pear, Chocolate & Ginger Bread Pudding being just one of many options. Simply defrost at room temperature for a couple of hours before using (freezing in cubes rather than as a whole means you can defrost as much as you need as well as it defrosting faster).
Cut into 1-2cm cubes and dry in the oven. Make use of an already warm oven by placing the cubes in a single layer in a baking tray at the bottom of the oven when you are finished cooking – leave them and forget about them. You want them to dry rather than cook. Once thoroughly dry, freeze as is to use as croutons or blend to fine bread crumbs – see next option.
Blend super-dry bread to fine bread crumbs and optionally mix with cheese & herbs to create a crispy coating for fish, pasta, meat or potatoes. Lentil Croquettes is another recipe which uses fine bread crumbs to create a crispy shell – you can flavour these little bite-size potato-alternatives with anything you fancy (sun-dried tomatoes, olives, feta, chorizo…).
Blend dry-ish bread to coarse crumbs and use to create sweet or savoury bread puddings – again try Pear, Chocolate & Ginger Bread Pudding, Cheese, Apple & Marmite Savoury Loaf or as a crumble style topping as in Christmas en Croûte.
Slice into large croutons and use either in a soup or to soak up the juices from a roast by placing underneath the meat. A recipe for roast guinea fowl from Theo Randall I can thoroughly recommend; you can omit some of the fiddler elements & still get to enjoy the best fried bread you’ll ever taste! Don’t shudder at the mention of fried bread, in this instance it’s replacing roast potatoes which you might otherwise have cooked in the meat pan:
guinea-fowl-recipe-theo-randall.
Finally, despite all of the above options, fresh bread can be made to last at least one more day by placing in a warm, moist oven. Place in the oven at around 150c with a dish of water beneath for 10-15 minutes. This will give it a second lease of life but be warned – this is a trump card you can play only once. The bread needs eating pretty quickly after removing from the oven. After that, it will be fit for almost bread crumbs only. Although that in itself is not the end of the world.