A Crummy Attitude

[Ellyn]

Okay, I'm not being quite that harsh to myself--but I just couldn't resist a pun.

I was just thinking about how people say that something is life-changing by saying, "the best thing since sliced bread" but it's not actually that difficult to slice bread. It's slightly more effortful to make breadcrumbs out of stale bread, but fortunately I've seen packets of that around the supermarket too.

Which got me wondering... weren't breadcrumbs leftovers? Wasn't stale bread?

I'm sure there are people who still make bread pudding or croutons to save otherwise good food from the rubbish bin from genuine neglected food. I admire you, instinctive, improvisational masters that you are. I tend to get stuck on a recipe, though.

I suppose it's sort of like how one of my mother's friends is insanely--well, inanely, I must say--wealthy and privileged, and sure, she has her own personal dramas that can be sympathetic...and she loves to bake! But when she's working on a pie crust, she scallops the edges and talks about how she read about peasants designing their pies that way, just folding the edge of the crust over that way instead of cutting it off, because they didn't want to waste food. The way she says it, it comes off like, "Isn't poverty so adorable? The funny, cute little ways that poor people develop! How quaint! How charming!" Part of me wants to tell her--Lady, just make a lattice top-crust. You're embarrassing me somehow with your peasant-edged pies.

Another part of me sort of recognizes this tendency in myself, when it comes to breadcrumbs.

Anyone else feel this way?

As it happens, I've found that manually crushed large breadcrumbs, whether from bagels or croutons (or even real authentic stale bread) make for a fluffier burger mix-in because it gets spongy as it soaks up the meat juices. I think breadcrumbs as in store-bought breadcrumbs just dry out the mix. Or maybe it's just my imagination, and the real secret is to add milk or something to keep burgers soft.

 

[firelily99]

Sometimes we get ideas from directions that we never would have thought of. I love the process that you went through that ultimately got you to the point of using homemade bread crumbs.

 

[Verity Darkwaters]

I won't lie, I grew up dirt poor so we did not have a lot of food. So I was taught at an early age you DO NOT waste food if you can help it. It was almost a sin growing up. So my mother taught me how to use stale bread as croutons and bread crumbs if the bread went stale before it was used up. I still do it today. I agree with the store bought ones, they just seemed like dehydrated bread to me. It isn't the same.

 

[Caribbean girl]

Years ago, we would use the outside crust of the bread to crush and make bread crumbs. This was usually what was left after making sandwiches, since we would usually slice off the edges of the bread before making sandwiches. This was then stored in the refrigerator for future use, either to make bread crumbs or to use when making bread pudding. After making the bread pudding, the leftover crusts would then be spread across the top of the mixture before it was put in the oven. The same can be said for leftover or stale bread...this would also be used to make a bread pudding rather than thrown away.

Nowadays, since bread crumbs are packaged and sold in the supermarket, we opt to buy these. The leftover edges of the bread are no longer kept for future use.