Freeze And Grate Bread For Delicious Bread Crumbs In A Flash
There's a lot of helpful advice out there about saving money at the grocery store. However, no matter how much money you save clipping coupons, shopping for generic brands, or scouring sales flyers, you'll still want to use up everything you buy before it goes bad. Then, you'll really get the bang for your buck.
According to Fortune, Americans waste nearly a third of all food purchases. One of the most commonly wasted foods is bread, which probably won't come as too big of a surprise. A fresh loaf can sometimes last up to a week at room temperature if you're lucky, but a lot of loaves go stale or moldy in just a couple of days. You can squeeze a few extra days out of your bread by putting it in the refrigerator, but that can accelerate staleness.
If you find you throw a lot of bread away and you want to stretch your grocery dollars, save an otherwise doomed loaf of bread by popping it in the freezer; it can last there for a couple of months. Then, you can take out a few slices at a time as needed. Plus, you can use your frozen loaves to make super-fast bread crumbs — all you need is a cheese grater. Added bonus: No more spending extra money on bread crumbs!
Extend your bread's shelf life
As an ingredient, bread crumbs are a workhorse, whether they're used for binding delicate crab cakes together, breading a perfect chicken cutlet, or topping a batch of mac and cheese. Store-bought bread crumbs can cost a handful of dollars (or more), but you can make them from whatever bread you have on hand, anytime, and save a few bucks.
All you need to do is save your stale bread from the trash by putting it in the freezer. Once the bread is completely frozen, grab a cheese grater and slide a piece of bread across the side, just like you would with cheese. If you want big crumbs, use the side with the big holes; for fine crumbs, use the side with the little holes meant for hard cheeses. It's that simple.
Using this method, you can grate just enough bread crumbs for a recipe, or grate a whole loaf and have bread crumbs ready for whenever you need them. Once you've grated your crumbs, you can store them back in the freezer — in an airtight container — for up to three months. Alternatively, you can toast your crumbs and keep them in an airtight container at room temperature for a few weeks. A freezer bag is perfect for storage; just be sure to label and date it so that you use the bread crumbs before they start to deteriorate.
Find your favorite flavors
You can use any kind of bread for making grated bread crumbs, but leftover baguettes and other light doughs work best because they're already pretty dry. This is also why they tend to get stale and harden up so quickly. Additionally, it's easier to hold a chunk of a baguette or an unsliced loaf when grating.
By making your own bread crumbs, you also have a lot more flavor choices than with store-bought versions. Try experimenting with different types of bread, herbs, and spices to really open up different flavor profiles in your recipes. Consider topping a spicy cassoulet with rye bread crumbs or putting challah crumbs on baked apples.
If you have any dietary restrictions, grating is also a good way to make specific bread crumbs for subbing into recipes that typically call for conventional bread crumbs. This will also prevent wasting money on specialty loaves, which can be significantly more expensive than standard ones. Now that you know you can use up a whole loaf of bread, even if it goes stale, you won't have to skip out on buying a whole baguette or boule — just pop it in the freezer and grate it up!