Homemade Breadcrumbs a.k.a. I Hate Throwing Anything Away

April 19, 2014 by Laurie Nguyen 28 Comments

It’s true.  I’m not a hoarder (at least not so much of a hoarder that you have to walk through tiny pathways through my house with your arms close to your body), but I do hate throwing perfectly useful things away.  Things like the heel on a loaf of bread.  My kids won’t eat them.  They’d rather not have bread than to eat a heel.  I don’t know why.  If I turn it with the heel side in, I cannot taste the difference.  But, apparently, my boys can.  So, they don’t eat them.  Ever.

 

Instead of throwing them away, I stick the heels in the freezer and wait.  After a month or so, I have a stack of heels and older bread that look something like this.

 

That’s a lot of bags! But, trust me, there’s bread in there, too.

 

That’s a lot of bread!  I was running low on breadcrumbs, so I decided to replenish my supply and clear out my freezer at the same time.  It’s super simple, and the breadcrumbs are fresh and yummy.  First, I put the bread on a cookie sheet and put it in a 275  degree oven until the bread was completely dry.

 

Lots and lots of bread, especially heels. This has white bread, sourdough wheat sandwich bread, and other whole grain breads.

 

After cooking it for a bit, I ended up putting the bread on two cookie sheets, but I didn’t snap a pic of that.  Sorry.  I did that to speed up the process a little.  If the bread is stacked, it takes FOREVER!  Once the bread was ready, I actually made a few bread crumbs for my homemade meatballs (recipe to come)…

 

Spaghetti sauce with homemade meatballs containing my homemade bread crumbs.

 

…And I stuck the rest of the toasted bread in my breadbox until the following day.  Here it is.

 

See? Nice and toasted, and ready to go into the food processor. You can put this in a bag and crush it with a rolling pin or can, but it is so much faster and easier to use a food processor (or blender).

 

I stuck several slices in my food processor and pulsed until the breadcrumbs were the right size.

 

I put several pieces into the food processor and pulsed until the bread became breadcrumbs.

 

Then, I stuck them in my old breadcrumb container and put them back in my pantry.  This was a pretty new container, so I reused it, but next time, I’ll stick it in a Tupperware something and store it that way.

 

Perfect breadcrumbs for free! (Well, except for the electricity for the food processor.)

 

Now I have a huge supply of breadcrumbs and they didn’t cost me a cent (other than what I would have spent on bread anyway).  I consider this a win-win.  I didn’t throw away anything useful, and I didn’t have to buy something I use regularly.

 

Do you think you’ll try your hand at breadcrumbs? 

If not, what’s another way you prevent food waste?

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