I did a poll in my Making food go further Facebook group asking which ingredients you regularly have leftover and need some tips for using up. The resounding response was sliced bread.
10 ways to use up your sliced bread:
1. Breadcrumbs. It’s an obvious one, but it doesn’t harm to have a reminder. If you’ve got breadcrumbs then you can use them in meatballs, veggie burgers, for homemade fish fingers or chicken dippers, to put on your macaroni cheese, to make bread sauce. The world’s your breadcrumb! Watch how I prepare breadcrumbs which will keep for months in the cupboard here.
2. Summer pudding. One of my mum’s favourites, this classic dessert can be made with a mix of frozen berries to bring summer to the table all year round.
3. Bread and butter pudding. Another obvious and classic choice. No need to stop at sliced bread either, use up croissants, pain au chocolat, hot cross buns, fruit loaf, bagels… How about flavouring the custard with chocolate for a change? Or, why not go savoury? Some delicious recipe ideas come up when Googling. I particularly like the sound of the Ottolenghi Christmas version on the Guardian website.
4. Bread pudding. Different to bread and butter pudding, it can be served as a cake with a cuppa as well as a dessert.
5. French toast, pain perdu, egg bread. Whatever you want to call it, it makes for a perfect sweet or savoury weekend brunch.
6. Bread gnocchi. A really good and more unusual way to use up bread that might otherwise go to waste is bread gnocchi. Great if you’ve gathered quite a stash plus any leftovers freeze well.
7. Croutons. To serve with salads or soups. Or go the whole hog and make an Italian salad called panzanella.
8. Thickening soups. Whilst we’re on the subject of soup, did you know that you can use stale bread, instead of potato, to thicken soups? When blitzed they are very silky.
9. Stuffing. We’ve entered roast season and what better way to make your food go further than to serve some stuffing as part of your sides. You can make a simple stuffing using 1/2 a blanched chopped onion, a few slices of bread, roughly torn into cubes, a knob of butter, salt and pepper, a squeeze of lemon and some sage (dried or fresh). Mix together with some of the liquid from blanching the onion and bake in the oven until crispy on the top.
10. Pie topping. Spread butter onto slices of bread (garlic butter would be yum depending on the pie filling) and cut into triangles then lay on your pie, overlapping a little. A great alternative to potato or pastry.
And a here’s a bonus point for you: beer. If you like a wee tipple, then check out Toast Ale. You can drink beer and save the planet. It’s a great beer made using surplus bread with profits going to charity. You can even make more bread using their beer!