crumb-y

I enjoy baking bread. We often don't eat it all, and sometimes the loaves come out a little less than tasty because of textural issues. Leftover bits and sometimes those leftover loaves are destined for one thing: breadcrumbs. A basket lined with a tea towel lives behind our bread bin and into that go the ends and stale slices from bread past the tasty point. Last week I baked a pair of loaves and through some vagary of rain or too much kneading the loaves were dry from the get-go. Ok for toast but even I must ration my toast consumption (trivia answer: my favorite food is toast). Part of one loaf and the entirety of another got sliced up and it was past time for breadcrumb making. That little basket was overflowing already.

The usual life cycle of bread-to-crumb is as follows: Uneaten ends of loaves (and whatever may remain of a stale loaf, sliced thinly) gets put in the crumb basket to dry out. Over the course of several weeks, even the hardest thickest end slice becomes a vulnerable dry hunk.

When I have a larger supply (say, an entire loaf not good for eating but fine for crumbs) I slice it thinly and give it a few 10 minute doses in a very low oven. I want to dry it out, not toast it. Then for a few days I spread it out on a clean tea towel on the dining room table to get good and dry. And hope that no one comes over and asks why I have 50 super thin slices of curling dried bread on my table.

Once dry, I employ freezer zip bags and my favorite mallet (a weighted pounder Charlie uses to flatten cutlets) and pound the slices into bits and pieces. I want them relatively small, nothing bigger than a dime.

ready to get out some aggression

Then comes my high tech solution. If you don't have a mixer and a meat grinder attachment, proceed to beat the crap out of your bread pieces until they are small. I use the larger disk on the grinder and some saran wrap to help with the crumbs-all-over problem. This is an effortless way to get your crumbs a uniform small consistency. I used to think that pounding them pretty small was fine, but then realized when cooking that you really want your breadcrumbs to be more of bread dust. The only time you want something larger is with panko, and that's an entirely different creature. So run all of your bread gravel through the grinder and you end up with lovely uniform crumbs.

the white zephyr

Since I'm using homemade bread, I can control the preservative and other chemical content. A bonus is that most of my bread contains a combination of buttermilk, regular milk, flax meal, and frequently a seed mix of flax anise poppy caraway and sesame. The resulting crumbs can only be described as....seasoned. They add zest. They are a secret ingredient in my meatloaf.

the end result

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Liam prefers giraffe meat