8 ways to use up stale bread

A bakery and kitchen full of life

Visit Eska in Karlín. Everry day, we bake our renowned bread 33, along with sweet buns, cakes and kolache. On Fridays, our bread 66 is available until it sells out – and if you're not in the mood for baked goods, come for a lunch of local produce, or one of our famous breakfasts, which are prepared until late afternoon. Oh, and don't forget to take a look round our shop on the way out.

Find out more on our website.

You don't throw bread away! Especially if it's an artisan sourdough loaf. While it's fresh, enjoy it with butter, and use the rest in imaginative recipes.

1. Seasoned breadcrumbs

Probably the easiest way to use up old bread is breadcrumbs. The crumb and the crust are cut and mixed into small grains (slightly coarser than traditional breadcrumbs), toasted in a pan with a little oil, pepper and salt and seasoned with other spices or herbs such as thyme, rosemary or oregano. The crunchy, tasty decoration can be sprinkled on salads and soups, on pasta and on roasted vegetables or meat.

When making breadcrumbs, do not overdo it with salt. Bread already contains salt and the seasoned sprinkles decorate the finished dishes, which are usually salty on their own. In a sealed container, dry and refrigerated, breadcrumbs will keep for up to several weeks. However, if you chop fresh herbs into it, keep it in the fridge and try to use it within a few days.

2. Pesto

Breadcrumbs have historically been used in Italy as alternative to cheese in pesto, as the so-called poor man's Parmesan. In fact, crumbled bread that is toasted in butter or olive oil takes on cheesy notes and makes an excellent base for pesto, both in terms of taste and texture.

The procedure is simple: first, a slice of old bread is ground into fine breadcrumbs, then herbs (such as parsley, basil, mint, spinach leaves or bear garlic), nuts, salt and pepper are added to the blender. Finally, the olive oil is slowly added to the mixture and the pesto is blended until it reaches the desired consistency.

3. Granola

A simple trick to make the most of old (sourdough) bread recipe for sweet or savoury granola. You cut the slices of dry wheat or rye bread into cubes and blend them into smaller pieces in a blender. Then you mix them with chopped (lightly toasted) nuts or seeds, puffed rice, a pinch of salt and liquid honey.

Bake the granola on a baking tray or in a baking dish lined with baking paper for about 35 to 40 minutes in an oven preheated to 175 °C. Stir the granola every 10 minutes so that it bakes evenly and does not clump together. You can add almonds and hazelnuts, cinnamon, cocoa and dried fruit such as apricots to the recipe, but it is important to use well-drained bread that can be broken and sliced.

4. Miso

In the London restaurant SILO, they leave the leftover bread to ferment into a delicious miso paste. Pieces of old bread are soaked in water until completely soft. The water is then drained off to leave just the bread in the bowl, and the bread is handmade into an even, lump-free paste. This is mixed with an equal quantity of komekoji and 3 % salt (by volume).

The mixture is sealed in an airtight container and placed in the fridge for 20 minutes. Finally, it is dusted with salt or covered with a 4 % salt solution, so that it extends about 2,5 cm above the surface. Miso paste ferments for about 3 weeks.

5. Sauce

Sourdough bread is a reliable thickener, but also the main ingredient in the preparation of various sauces. A somewhat unusual recipe is presented by the chefs from Eska - thick bread sauce is served with roasted vegetables, confit carrots or even roast poultry.

Ingredients:

• 250 g sourdough bread
• 1 white salad onion
• 6 garlic cloves
• 180 ml cold-pressed sunflower oil
• 225 g roasted sunflower seeds
• 1 tbsp honey
• 120 g canned tomatoes (or fresh chopped tomatoes)
• 240 g vegetable stock (can be chicken stock)
• 2 tablespoons chopped smooth parsley leaves
• 5 tablespoons lemon juice
• black pepper and salt

Process

1. Cut the bread into slices and brown in a cast iron pan. Then cut it into cubes, place in a baking dish and mix with the chopped onion and garlic.
2. Drizzle with a little oil and bake in an oven preheated to 170 °C for about 10 minutes.
3. When the mixture has cooled, transfer it to a blender and add all the other ingredients. Blend until a smooth paste is formed.

6. Bread mayonnaise

In Karlín, they also make old bread into an emulsion, which is suitable for salads and roasted or baked vegetables. Prepare 40 g of bread crumbs without crust, a brine of fermented or pickled cucumbers, 2 eggs, 20 g of Dijon mustard and 200 ml of sunflower oil (cold-pressed). Soak the bread crumb in the pickle brine for 2 hours, then mix it with the eggs and mustard. Slowly add the oil until a mayonnaise-like emulsion forms.

7. Puddings

In old cookbooks, leftover bread was crumbled into sweet dishes such as zemlbába, bublanina or the popular custard pudding which is often forgotten in Czech cuisine. Sandtner made it from old buns or sponge crumbs, and in the Krkonoše Mountains it was made from 3 slices of hard bread, 5 tablespoons of rum, 3 tablespoons of butter and 4 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons of sugar, orange peel, a packet of raisins, a pinch of cinnamon, pounded cloves and 4 egg whites, whipped and stiffened.

And the procedure? The bread is grated and covered with rum. In the meantime, the butter and sugar were beaten in a saucepan until foamy, to which the egg yolks, finely chopped orange peel, rinsed raisins, spices, swollen bread and finally the egg white snow were added. The batter was poured into a greased tin lined with breadcrumbs and slowly steamed for about an hour.

For the zemlbába, about a kilo of hard bread was used, which was first stripped of its crust. The mould or baking dish was brushed with butter and gradually filled with a layer of grated crumb and apple slices, which were sugared and sprinkled with cinnamon. The last bread layer was sprinkled with milk, the filling was covered with slices of butter and baked until golden brown (about half an hour).

The next sweet finish was bublanina made of bread that had swelled in cranberry wine, grated finely and mixed with a foam made of 5 tablespoons of butter with 5 tablespoons of sugar and 5 egg yolks. Finally, 5 stiffened egg whites and the grated nuts were carefully stirred into the mixture. The batter was poured into a buttered tin dusted with breadcrumbs and baked in a preheated oven for about half an hour. The finished bublanina was covered with raspberry juice.

8. Rolled appetizers

A simple yet ingenious appetizer once invented in the Michelin restaurant La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise. The bread was frozen so that it could be cut into very thin slices on a slicer, and then Prague ham was wrapped in these slices. The rolls were fried in a pan to make them firm and crispy, and piled on the plate with grated horseradish, mustard seeds or perhaps microgreens.

Source: Ambiente chefs, Masterclass - Apollonia Poilâne, Krkonoše cook Jiri Marhold, Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint