What can we do to massively reduce all these loaves being thrown in the bin? I asked the members of the reduce your food waste Facebook group what they do to avoid wasting them and I have listed their recipe ideas below. Their first tip though, was that if you know you won’t be able to make it through a loaf in time, freeze it!

I freeze bread all the time. If I freeze it sliced, I freeze it at angle because it makes it easier to separate the pieces once it is frozen. It will last longer in the freezer and defrosts well. Defrost rolls in the fridge over night to be able to cut them in the morning. Alternatively you can freeze rolls cut open with the pieces separated out to start with. Frozen slices of bread defrost quickly. We often make sandwiches in the morning with the slices still frozen and by lunch time they are fully defrosted. You can also freeze breadcrumbs until you need them.  With or without a freezer though, you still might find yourself a loaf you are not sure what to do with.   

Savoury use it up ideas shared by the group included:  

• Toast slightly stale bread – it tastes just fine!
• Use breadcrumbs in/ on homemade fish cakes 
• Cover homemade chicken nuggets with breadcrumbs
• Use day old bread in homemade meatballs
• Top a savoury crumble with breadcrumbs 
• Make glamorgan sausages (a type of vegetarian sausage which uses breadcrumbs)
• Croutons e.g. these rosemary and garlic challa croutons
• Melba toast make a delicious alternative to crackers
• Bread sauce. It is meant to be a good eaten with chicken or turkey, but I have never tried it!
• Strata bakes. I had to look this one up! It is a kind of frittata with cubed day old bread and it is very flexible. It sounds like a great way to use up lots of leftover ingredients which can be added to the frittata. You could add cubes of potato to this.
• Savoury bread cases which can be used instead of pastry. To make sure they don’t go soggy cook them in the oven a bit first.
• Sarah shared her marmite and cheese bread and butter ‘pudding’ recipe and has kindly allowed me to reshare it here.  ‘I just butter the bread then spread with Marmite. Layer in a dish with grated cheese between each slice. Cover with a milk and egg mix just as you would for a sweet version and then sprinkle some cheese and a bit of paprika on the top before baking in the same way you would do the sweet version.’ I think my kids will love this and it’s on my to try list!
• Bobotie. It is a traditional South African tender and creamy mince meat recipe, which uses a couple of slices of bread – this Bobotie recipe explains more. 
• Amy shared her article with more ideas on how to use up your bread

Suggestions for sweet uses included

• Bread and butter pudding
• Bread Pudding
• Apple Charlotte, 
• Summer Pudding.
• Bread crumb cookies

So next time you are faced with an excess/ stale / day old bread, don’t bin it, use it up instead!    Another post you might like: Making bread the zero waste plastic free way

For an overview of how to reduce your food waste buy my Eco Thrifty Living Book ! One of the central themes in it is reducing waste and the first chapter is all about reducing kitchen waste. The suggestions I make are affordable and could save you money! I think it’s a great introduction to the eco-thrifty life but I’m probably biased. Before you make up your mind, check out the reviews on Amazon and from bloggers: Frugal Family, Inspirationalise , A Refuge for Daffodils and Allotment Recipes.

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I regularly make bread and bread products at home! When I do, I prefer to create as little waste as possible in the process. I would love to make entirely plastic free and zero waste bread, but it is difficult to avoid it altogether. However by making a few simple tweaks you can reduce it.

Plastic free and zero waste (ish) ingredients for bread making at home

The key ingredients in this typical bread recipe are salt, yeast, oil, flour and water (personally I think 1 teaspoon of salt is enough).

You may be able to find you can get a lot of these things packaging free from a local zero waste shop (but you would need to check on how they do things now in the light of the virus). If you are shopping in other shops then,

• Water from the tap is obviously plastic free. If you prefer filtered water, you could try bamboo charcoal
• Salt – we bought sea salt in bulk from a French salt marsh that we visited when we did a house swap holiday, which has lasted us years! If you don’t want to buy in bulk, look out for salt that comes in a cardboard box. Recycle the cardboard when you are done.
• Oil – we have saved money and packaging on olive oil by buying giant bulk bottles of it and decanting into smaller glass bottles when needed. Not entirely plastic free, but reduces plastic. You could just skip the giant bottle and buy only glass if you prefer. (Tip – if a recipe calls for butter, you can substitute it for the same weight of oil to make it vegan/ dairy free)
• Flour – usually comes in paper bags which are easily recycled.
• Yeast – I normally buy yeast in small tins, which I think is less waste overall than small sachets, but does have plastic lids.

What if you want to do bread making without yeast?

If you can’t get hold of yeast or want to avoid the packaging it comes in, then you could make sourdough instead. It uses a sourdough starter, which can you make at home from just flour and water. It is a bit fiddly and will take a few days to make. So you won’t be able to make your bread straight away when you start.

Reduced waste bread making methods

Clingfilm alternatives for bread making at home

First proof

Most recipes for making dough include the instruction to put some clingfilm over the dough when it is rising. However, there is absolutely no need to use this wasteful product. Even if it is biodegradable, it is still intended to be used once and then chucked. Plus biodegradable does not necessarily mean it will break down quickly on your home compost heap.

I gave up clingfilm years ago after discovering there were so many alternatives to clingfilm. When making bread the zero waste way, there are lots of options!

1. Make the dough in a breadmaker – no clingfilm needed in there. You could also put dough in a slow cooker to rise.
2. Leave the dough to rise in a bowl with a tea towel loosely draped over
3. Put the dough in a bowl and then put it in an insulated bag, like a freezer bag or Wonderbag *ad* in a warm room.
4. Heat an oven for 5 minutes, then let it cool for 15 minutes. Then put the dough in an ovenproof dish in the warm oven to rise.

Dough likes warm conditions, so in the summer I just put the dough in a bowl with a cloth over it and in the winter I am more likely to use the freezer bag or oven trick. Otherwise you need to leave the dough out much longer to rise in cooler conditions.

Second proof

After I have let my dough rise I shape it either for bread, rolls or for pizza. I put pizza and rolls on a pizza stone. I put bread dough in a stoneware loaf pan. If you don’t have stoneware, put it on the tray/ pan you are going to bake it in.

Sometime I don’t bother at all with a second proof if I have left the dough to rise for a long time beforehand, or if I run out of time. However if I do want to let it rise some more, I find the ideal thing to use this time round, instead of a tea towel is a mesh food umbrella*. It stays off the dough as it is rising and does the job well. Using a freezer bag, Wonderbag, a breadmaker or an oven in the same way as before will work well too.

Baking paper alternatives

When it is time to cook the bread, you can either do it in a bread maker, which wouldn’t use any baking paper, or an oven. I love baking on stoneware in the oven, it is the ideal material to bake on. Plus once seasoned, stoneware is naturally non-stick. Meaning there is no need for baking paper, which reduces waste.

Energy efficient bread making at home

For one loaf of bread a bread maker is an energy efficient option. However, if you don’t have a bread maker the best way to save energy would be to cook it at the same time as using the oven to cook other things.

Bread can also be baked in a slow cooker which again would be low energy (I haven’t tried this, so can’t say if it works well or not though).

Storing bread without disposable packaging

Once the bread is made I store it in a reusable bread bag. Homemade bread doesn’t stay fresh for long, so sometimes I freeze it.

The best way to freeze bread is in a plastic bag (you can keep reusing a bag from a shop bought loaf of bread). I did try using tea towels once to freeze pizza bases. Now I freeze spare pizza dough in tupperware containers instead of making it into bases to freeze.

Make sure you eat it all up!

If you ever have leftovers and aren’t sure what to do with them, these are my top ways to use up bread.

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1.       Freeze your bread

If there is a special offer on your favourite type of bread and/ or if you know that one loaf isn’t enough to last you the week but the extra loaf will go off before you can use it, take up the offer/ buy the bread you need and freeze the extra bread.  If it is sliced open the packet and arrange the slices so that they are in a diagonal position.  Once they are frozen, it will be far easier to separate the slices from each other than if they were frozen upright.  In fact you can bang the frozen loaf on the counter and the bread slices should separate out.  If the bread is not sliced, then cut it into slices and do as above.  

The bread is best frozen at its freshest, especially if you are going to make sandwiches. You can make your sandwiches with the bread still frozen.  You can make them the night before and keep them in the fridge overnight or you can also make them the next day and they will be defrosted by lunchtime.   If you don’t manage to freeze your bread at its freshest and it goes past it’s best (but isn’t mouldy), you can still freeze it as there are many recipes for bread which isn’t at its freshest.  You can of course use it straight away, but if you don’t have the time or need for it then and there it is still best to freeze it.

By freezing your bread, you will limit your trips to the supermarket (where it is so easy to end up spending more than you intended) and will be able to make full use of the bread you bought. You will save yourself money and there will be less waste.

2.       Use your day old bread in the following ways:

• 1.       Toast
• 2.       Melba toast
• 3.       French bread
• 4.       Fried bread
• 5.       Croutons
• 6.       Bread and butter pudding    

You can also turn your bread into breadcrumbs.  They can be used straight away or frozen for later.  Breadcrumbs can be used in many ways and there are just a few examples below:  

• a.      As an ingredient in homemade burgers or meatballs
• b.      As a pie topping, when mixed with cheese
• c.      As an ingredient in stuffing
• d.      As part of a coating for fish or poultry  

For more ideas and recipes detailing how to use up day old bread and other foods that aren’t at their freshest, have a look at Love Food Hate Waste. If you liked this post, I would really appreciate it if you click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – Thanks!

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