What to do with unwanted leftover bread?

Don’t throw away your stale bread!! Sorry for shouting. I just had to get that out there. Stale bread is even more useful and versatile than fresh bread. You are denying yourself so many opportunities for flavour, invention and experimentation if you are sending your stale or leftover bread on a one-way trip to the dustbin.

​Here are but a few:

 
In the Kitchen 

• Slice and freeze bread that is just starting to go past its best. Bread toasted from frozen is, somehow, even better than when it’s toasted from fresh. It’s like it knows it has been given a second chance at life, and it just wants to thank you.
  
  
• Tear the stale bread into chunks. Fry, or bake, in olive oil and sea salt. Croutons. You’re welcome.
  
  
• Do what the Italians do. Make a panzanella, or a ribollita. Stale bread is the backbone of so many ancient and enduring Italian dishes. I could write a whole separate post on this.
  
  
• Blitz the poor, unwanted bread into breadcrumbs to use as a topping for future fish pies, or similar.
  
  (The chunks and breadcrumbs can both also be frozen. Yes, my freezer is a sight to behold).
  
  
• Make French toast. Make bread and butter pudding. Any opportunity for stale bread to soak up some sort of sauce or custard is one not to be missed.

 
The Circular Economy, starring stale bread 
If you are absolutely sick of the sight of the bread and can’t bear it being in your kitchen a moment longer, perhaps take inspiration from what we do here at The Urban Co-op with any bread that doesn’t sell (even though this is a rare enough occurrence - bread sells!).
 
We do our best to dispose consciously of any and all waste that we create. In the case of bread, some suppliers return and collect it and bring it away with them (there are myriad uses for leftover bread in the food industry). In the cases where this doesn’t happen, we place the leftover loaves into a dedicated food waste bin, which is then donated to some of our suppliers who use it in the feed that goes to their pigs!
 
So, even old bread can be an example of one of the core facets of our mission at The Urban Co-op: hopefully providing inspiration for what a functioning circular economy can look like.
 
In fact, repurposing of something old into something new will be the topic for next month’s zero waste tip, so keep your eyes peeled for next month’s newsletter if this is a topic that interests you!

Kelly Girardi