How to Use Stale Sourdough Bread or Focaccia for Easy Homemade Salad or Soup Croutons

Stale Bread? No problem! Here’s our EASY recipe to make homemade croutons

Our Garden Fresh Caprese Salad Recipe
– 2 cups cherry tomatoes halved
– 1 tub small fresh mozzarella balls, I like the ones marinated in italian spices
– 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
– 1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
– 1 teaspoon Italian Spices
– Salt & Pepper to taste
– 4 stems of fresh basil, leaves ripped or thinly sliced
– 1 cup homemade croutons

Homemade Croutons:
– 2 cups stale bread cut into 1/2 inch chunks
– 2 tablespoons olive oil, just enough to coat the bread
– 1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
– 1/4 teaspoon Garlic Salt
– Salt / Pepper to taste. Try a piece of bread and see how it tastes! Add more spices as needed

Toast at 400 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes, stirring at about 8 minutes.

Here are all of the links!

Our Focaccia Recipe : https://youtu.be/nVXCzmMpN5w

Our Full Sourdough Playlist! Be sure to Subscribe so you know when we post the Next Video https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfPIhWGHaEXEA7kxD-mm3hblFikt-Kyjw&si=JqVsxrZV6R2nr1C9

Sourdough Starter Break Down : https://youtu.be/mwA52Kltmnc

All about Your Starter and how to Keep it in the Fridge : https://youtu.be/i9plruicoTg

How to Wake Your Sourdough Starter Up from the Fridge : https://youtu.be/PPdiFpWqfSw

How to fix a Weak Starter : https://youtu.be/7doH31APYxc

All of our Sourdough Essential tools : https://amzn.to/4ly1ijI

All of our Favorite Kitchen Tools : https://amzn.to/3lmP6rj

Our Cookbook : https://ciderpresslane.com/shop/dinner-changes-everything-menus-from-ciderpress-lane

Our Red Tin Treats ECookBook : https://ciderpresslane.com/shop/red-tin-treats-holiday-issue

Did you know that when you watch our videos you help fight human trafficking! It’s true, years ago we decided to use our everyday life as a way to fight against slavery and trafficking. Since then we started hosting the Freedom Dinners ( https://youtu.be/unIuS5DAYWY ) and when our business , http://www.ciderpresslane.com , started we knew we wanted it to give back too. We donate 10% of all of our profits to ⁨@AtlasFree⁩ to fight for those that cannot stand up for themselves. So glad we get to bake and garden, fill our tables and use the beauty of our everyday lives as a powerful tool for hope!

Video Chapters:
0:00 – 1:50 – the EASIEST way to use Stale Bread, How to Make Croutons!
1:51 – 3:36 – how to make croutons, slice bread
3:37 – 5:00 – dress croutons and roast
5:01 – 6:18 – toast the croutons at 400 degrees
6:19 – 7:01 – easiest way to use croutons!

#sourdoughbaking #sourdoughbread #sourdoughstarter #sourdoughforbeginners #sourdoughrecipe #sourdoughrecipe #sourdoughclub #sourdough #sourdoughfocaccia #focaccia #bread #breadrecipe #gardenfresh #tomato #tomatoes #tomatoharvesting #tomatorecipe #gardentomatoes #gardenrecipe #gardening #tomatogardening #tomatosalad #capresesalad #caprese #salad #saladrecipe #summersalad #summergardening

If your sourdough has gone stale, all hope is not lost. I know how frustrating it is. You go through all the work to feed the starter, proof the dough, make this gorgeous loaf, and then it doesn’t get eaten in time, and it goes stale. It’s hard as a rock. What are you gonna do? I’m gonna show you. Let’s make croutons. Okay. There’s so many ways that you can use the croutons. And honestly, you can even freeze the croutons for later if you’re like, I don’t need them right now. Or freeze the stale bread for later and you can use it later. But don’t throw it away. Don’t give it to the chickens. Okay, maybe the chickens can have some. Um, don’t put it in your compost. You can use it. One of the ways that we love to use it is in our I mean it’s kind of like a caprese salad all mixed up. But I put these amazing croutons into the salad with fresh mozzarella and fresh tomatoes, fresh basil from the garden, little bit of olive oil, Italian spices, balsamic vinegar. Boom. You have the most amazing salad. Or if it’s the winter time, you can put the croutons on top of your tomato soup or your stew. So delicious. Um or make Caesar salad. Hello. That’s probably like the most obvious one that people would choose. Maybe. I don’t know. You get to choose how you use your croutons. But don’t throw your stale bread out. All hope is not lost. So here’s how I make them. It only takes about 15 minutes total. Cut it up, season it, roast it in the oven, and they’re ready to go. So, let’s make some croutons. Let’s use that stale bread. We don’t want it to go to waste. And this is coming to the table for dinner tonight. Here’s the cool thing. Whether you have stale ficasha bread that you made, or maybe it’s just a regular old rustic loaf of sourdough, it could be a sandwich loaf. Here’s the thing, it can be any kind of bread. It doesn’t have to be ficasha, but that’s just what happened to be in my bin and had gotten stale. And here’s the main goal is that you want all of those pieces of bread to be about the same size. The reason why you want them the same size is because then they will toast and roast in the oven evenly. If you have a really small one and a really big one, the small one is going to turn into a crispy burned little nugget and your big one might still be a little bit chunky. So, cut all of the bread that you’re going to use into about the same size chunks. I like ours to be about a half an inch squareish. And the reason why I make them that size is simply because it’s easy to get it on the fork with a bite of whatever you’re going to have or on a spoon if you’re having it with soup. So I kind of try to think, okay, I want this to be bite-size so it’s easy to eat because they’re crunchy. You don’t want this big huge crouton in your mouth that’s crazy crunchy cuz you’re just going to end up like ripping your mouth up. So, all of your bread cut about the same size. Toss it into a bowl. I like to do the seasoning and dressing of it in a bowl because it’s easier to make sure that all the croutons get the same level of olive oil and seasoning. Some people like to do it on their baking sheet so they don’t have another dirty dish. Completely up to you. But once all of your bread is cut up, then pull out your olive oil, your Italian seasoning, garlic salt, and we’re going to just drizzle. And what I do is it’s about a tablespoon for each cup of croutons. And this is an about amount. Okay? If you toss yours around and you’re like, “Oh, it looks like some of them still aren’t getting coated with olive oil.” Use a little bit more. I don’t measure the croutons as I’m putting them in the bowl. I’m basically drizzling that olive oil until I can see that all the croutons have gotten coated. They don’t need to be soaked, drenched. You don’t want them soggy with olive oil. And then we do the same thing with the Italian seasonings and the garlic salt. You’re going to do a little light coating of it. Stir. Do another light coating. Stir. And this is the cool thing. You can make them as spiced and seasoned as you want. All alone, without any seasoning, they’re still delicious. Think about how delicious the bread was before it went stale. It’s still delicious bread. Um, but I just like to do a light seasoning uh because it just gives the salad or the soup or the stew or whatever you’re adding them into just a little added boost of flavor. So, get those all mixed up, stirred up so everything’s coating them. Grab a baking sheet and we’re going to pour these out onto a baking sheet. We want them to be in a single layer. You want them to have a little bit of space to breathe so that they can actually toast. If they’re all clumped on top of each other, the ones on the bottom are not going to toast. Only the top layer would toast. Um, make sure that you are preheating your oven to 400°. And these are going to go into the oven. They only take maybe 10 to 12 minutes. So, you can see I’m using my spatula, spreading it out because we don’t want them stuck and sitting together. And I’m putting this whole recipe down below. I’m also putting the recipe below for how I make that amazing salad, which I’ll show you it again once we get all these croutons into it. But get this into your oven. Let them toast for about eight minutes. At the 8 minute mark, you want to stir them so that you can get them evenly toasted. Then let them go back into the oven. And I do 5 minutes more. And I check them because at this point, you’re just wanting them to be like golden toasted. If you let them go for too long, um they can get like almost too hard to eat. So you just want them golden toasted. Here’s what they look like. They’re all like pretty evenly toasted. And as they cool, they get even crunchier. So, just know that when they first bring them out of the oven, they’re still going to be a little bit soft, but they get crunchier. So, don’t over toast them. You’ll be upset when you go to take a bite of your salad and then add them to whatever salad or soup you want. We love this fresh tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil salad. Oh, it’s one of our favorites during the summer. All of it’s below. Let’s grab that stale bread and make some delicious croutons for your summer salad. We’re so glad you’re here in the kitchen with us.