It’s that time again- another Frugal Tip of the Day (FTOTD)! You know those little money-saving ideas that aren’t quite big enough for a whole post? That’s what this series is all about.
Reviving Stale Bread
I don’t know about you, but every so often I discover a lonely bag of sliced bread or a few forgotten pitas hiding in the back of my fridge (often along with some decomposing slimy vegetable, I must confess.) And by the time I find them, they’re pretty much dried out and stale. Sometimes they’re moldy, but not usually. Before you consider the following, make sure there are no moldy spots on them.
Dry, stale bread is totally salvageable.
The easiest trick is just to toast it. Toasting stale bread does wonders — it brings back the crunch and makes it taste fresh again.
I often put some cheese and ketchup on it and toast it in my sandwich maker. Alternatively, I put it in a pop up toaster. (Pitas need to be sliced in half to fit in mine.) And when I want the loaf whole, I pop it in my oven for a few minutes. (Though if you have a toaster oven, that also works.)
Toasting the bread turns it from something unappealing to bread that, in my opinion, is even more divine than fresh bread. Try filling a toasted pita with tuna and veggies, or cream cheese, and it is soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside. Divine. Serve your toast with some butter and eggs. Mmmmm. Or turn it into garlic bread by spreading it with either butter or olive oil, some garlic powder, and salt, and toast it in the oven.
But if you want the bread more like fresh bread and not crunchy (why, I do not know, lol), you can do this in the microwave too! Lightly wet the stale bread or pita (just sprinkle it or run it quickly under water), wrap it in a damp paper towel, and microwave it for about 10–20 seconds. The steam helps soften it up and makes it taste like fresh bread again. But not too much water or you’ll have a soggy mess. You might want to just wet your hand and brush your wet hand over it once or twice to make sure it isn’t too wet.
If you’d rather use the oven, that works great too. Lightly wet the bread the same way, then wrap it in foil and pop it in a preheated oven at around 150°C (300°F) for about 5–10 minutes. The steam inside the foil will bring it back to life!
You can also use stale sliced bread for French toast; the dryness actually helps it soak up the egg mixture better. Or turn it into stuffing for your next big meal- stale bread works best for that too!
So next time you are digging around your fridge and discover bread, or you realize that you bought too much bread and need to use it up even after it got stale, don’t toss it into the trash. Give it a second chance with a little toasting (or steaming) and transform it into something delicious.
Do you ever find stale bread or pita lurking in your kitchen? How do you save it? Do you toast it like I do, or do you have another trick?
2 Responses
Basically, bread, crackers, cereal etc go stale by either losing too much moisture or gaining it. So to freshen it, you need either to add moisture, or for soft crackers or cereal, crisp it in the oven.
Here in Tunisia stalebread is used in lablebi (a kind of chickpea soup/stew) as a thickener, as well as stale, dehydrated bread ground into breadcrumbs to make tajine (which, unlike Moroccan tajine, is more like a crustless quiche).
We don’t really like toast but I do make French toast and bread pudding.