March 16, 2011 - 9:34am
What do to with failed bread?
I tried to make the gold bread from Hamelman's book and it didn't rise at all (argh, I guess next time I should follow my instincts instead of his lack-of-directions for hands). Now I got a dense brick of gummy baked flour. Is there anyway to reuse/recycle in another dish?
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For the dry parts of the bread, they're usually made into bread crumbs or used in some kind of pudding. As for gummy bread, I wonder if you can use it like a panade and mix it with ground meat.
My usual approach is to make croutons - we eat a lot of Caesar salad and I absolutely HATE store bought croutons, they taste like dry cardboard with a coating of chemical-tasting spices
when we don't finish a loaf of bread, either homemade or store-bought, they "recycle" as croutons. If I don't need to make them right away, I simply cut in cubes and freeze, making the croutons without even defrosting them
I have been known to slice gummy bread and toast it. Next, I grind up the toasted slices in a coffee grinder with some spices (such as oregano, black pepper, juniper berries) And then I use these flavored breadcrumbs when I make homemade blackbean or veggie burgers or veggie meatballs. Works best when you use about 1/2-3/4 cup of the breadcrumbs per recipe of burgers, and when there are other ingredients (like chopped onions, eggs, crushed sunflower seeds, tamari) to hold the burgers together and add flavor.
Admittedly, this all seems like a good bit of work to salvage failed bread, but given that I purchase good quality flour at a good price, and lugged it to my kichen etc etc, I am loathe to waste any bread.
like you would for cold potatoes. Brown them in butter or oil with onion, garlic, some cut up sausage or ham, throw in an egg and add some spices or herbs to taste. Serve with a dark green salad.
use it as a thickening agent in gazpacho :-) Just make sure to blitz it well so you don't have chunks.
and cut to small bite sizes, bake in the oven until crispy. Presto, homemade Melba-ish toast.
Or...
Brush the thin slices with a little olive oil and sprinkle your fave herbs, seasoning, seed and/or kosher salt before toasting: tasty snack crackers.
And if you happen to use the oven to cook something else soon after, pop these in when you're done baking whatever and use the residual heat to save firing up the oven just for these.
appreciate my mistakes!
Pam
Last week I sliced my failed gummy bread thin, brushed it with Italian salad dressing and put it under the broiler. My family thought it was great. The rest I composted or gave to the dogs for treats.
When it's beyond palatable it goes into our carbon sink [pc for compost pile]....,
Wild-Yeast
I rolled it into little balls and boiled them with chicken and vegetable soup. Turned out really good. I was in a rush so I sauteed the vegetables with the seasonings, boiled the chicken and then tore the chicken up with my kitchenaid mixer and added it all together.