crouton recipe

Use day old bread in this delicious crouton recipe!

I love using this crouton recipe to make bread that has seen better days into something new and wonderful. I like to flavour my croutons with garlic and rosemary to make them even more delicious.

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My kids love them and they are so simple to make that my 9 year old can make them himself (with a little help from me)

The obvious thing to do with croutons is to put them in soup. But they are also delicious in salads and as a snack on their own. We recently used up some homemade croutons in a ‘Harvester style’ salad, which went down a treat. The croutons in this picture are quite dark because we used brown bread.

Harvester style salad

Rosemary and garlic crouton recipe

Ingredients:

There are deliberately no quantities in this recipe. This is because you can make as much or as little as you like depending on how much bread you need to use up!

  1. Day old bread (i.e. bread just past it’s best)
  2. Fresh garlic
  3. Freshly picked rosemary or dried garlic
  4. Olive oil

Method:

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C
  2. Cut up the slices of bread into crouton sized cubes.
  3. Place into a baking tray. Avoid using foil or baking paper, by putting the croutons directly onto a baking tray.
  4. Either cut the rosemary finely (I recommend using herb scissors*, but normal kitchen scissors will also do the job), or you could blitz it in a blender
  5. Then crush the garlic and mix with the rosemary and some olive oil
  6. Drizzle the blended liquid over the breadcrumbs and mix well to coat them.  You may find you need to be quite generous with the oil as the breadcrumbs drink it up!
  7. Place the breadcrumbs in the oven for around 15-20 minutes, turning them over every 5 minutes to stop them from burning.
  8. Leave to cool. If you leave them in the cooling oven for up to 30 mins afterwards it will help them to crisp up further.
  9. When they are completely cool and hard to the touch, store in a airtight container, like an old jar or a tin.
  10. Enjoy!

How to save energy while following this crouton recipe

If you have some space in the oven while you are cooking these, you could also make some fruit leather, potato peel crisps or kale crisps at the same time. That way you make the most use of the energy.

For those of you who have solar panels, do it while the sun is shining and pay less or perhaps nothing at all for the electricity used.

Making your own croutons is very satisfying. You can feel proud that you made your own delicious croutons, eliminated food waste and saved money!

Find out lots more ways to use up unwanted bread here: 20 ways to stop wasting bread

Want more snack ideas that help prevent food waste? Check out my list of 5 of the best healthy and homemade zero waste snacks.