Botched Breads!

When you bake, sometimes you mess up your loaves. Or muffins. Or whatever bready-sort of thing it was. If you’re new to baking, this might be happening all the time right now. Or maybe you just made too much and now you’ve got stale bread you think will be bad before you can eat it. It’s okay - you don’t have to throw it away! In almost every instance, there’s a thing you can still do with these reject breads!

One thing y’all may wish to know is that everyone who bakes screws up loaves. Even master bakers. Frequency of failure and understanding of what wrong tend to be the only real difference between novices and masters here. Novices generally fail more, and usually don’t know why. Master bakers have fewer fails on established recipes (but still fail often while in development), but tend to know (or be able to make an educated guess about) what they did wrong when it happens. The difference between a novice and a master baker is time, in general. Anyone can be an expert with enough time, effort, and moxie.

Before we look at that, though, let’s look at what may have gone wrong. I’ve mostly heard about lots and lots of dense loaves that didn’t rise well since the pandemic started. This generally is happening to people who bake without a scale, and if this is you and these are your loaves, you’re measuring the flour wrong. Now, this might not be what went wrong for you, but in the vast majority of cases where a bread went wrong and the flour was measured by volume? This is usually it.

Most people measure by scooping flour out of whatever bag or container it’s in. Unfortunately, bread recipes are written for flour that isn’t compacted if the units of measure are volumetric. I’m going to give you a video on this, since most people are visual learners and how I explain it seems to be hit or miss. I use a fork instead of the more standard spoon for what she’s going to show you below!

I just have too much bread - what do I do with it all?

My preferred answer here is to share it! If you’ve made too much to eat fresh and/or freeze, you’ve probably got some neighbors, friends, or relatives who’d be thrilled to get a contactless gift of your freshly baked nommables. If sharing and freezing don’t work for you, scroll on down to the main ideas area!

But how do you freeze bread?

It’s simple! You’ve got two options here: sliced or whole loaves. Frozen bread keeps about 3 months, on average. I generally freeze breads and pastries when I don’t have time to make a big pastry and breads basket for someone in one shot (or I don’t want to have to make the same thing over and over for myself), but do still want to make one. I can then “save up” different breads and whatnot in the freezer over the course of a couple of weeks and then thaw and ship once I’m ready!

For sliced loaves, you’ll want to “flash freeze” the slices first. This means you’ll take individual slices and put them on some kind of tray, then freeze for two hours. Once the timer dings, go on ahead and reassemble your loaf and either store it in a freezer bag (most people double bag to help assure no freezer burn occurs) or a freezer container wherever you’ve got room in there. Make sure you get all the air out of the bag(s) when you’re closing them!

For whole loaves, you basically do the same thing without the flash freezing. If you want to keep it for up to 6 months, then you wrap the bread tightly in cling film (I usually do 2 layers), then in either foil or butcher paper. Up to you if you want to add the freezer bag to the mix, but this method of double wrapping will give you about 6 months of shelf life.

To thaw, put it in the refrigerator overnight and it’ll be ready for you when you wake up. Many people just thaw individual slices at room temperature, as well.

Bread Cubed (b^3)

What I generally do with my failed or excess loaves is cut them into cubes, toss in containers, and put those in the freezer. More of that freezing business. I don’t package them carefully once they’re cubed and in there, because I know I’m really just sticking them there while I decide which option I prefer to eat on a given day.

Cubed reject breads are good for a LOT! You can make croutons, bread pudding (perhaps with a bourbon sauce?), bread and butter pudding, even plum pudding! I recommend exploring plum pudding if you’ve made enough bread that you might be willing to age a pud for a year! To be honest, I don’t like bread pudding; the texture really bothers me. But I make these a lot for my family since it’s easy and they love it. If you do, though, there’s even a microwave version! In general, you really can use any kind of bread you want. I’ve mixed together rye, cornbread, blueberry muffins, and white bread in the same bake, and they were just as happy with it as usual. You could even use cinnamon buns in there. Whatever. Go nuts. Unless there’s a weird bread or similar this won’t go with, I tend to season mine with cardamom and, where appropriate, a bit of meyer lemon extract. Oh! Don’t forget early American flummadiddle (scroll all the way to the bottom of this link for the recipe)!

I’d probably be remiss not to mention strata, which are savory bread puddings people like to eat for breakfast and such. If you’re not into using recipes and prefer methods, there’s a resource for you too.

Croutons are where it’s at though. If you want your croutons for your salads and soups, don’t make them until you want them. They’re really not going to last long enough bc omgdelicious. There are even sweet, dessert type croutons like salted caramel, if you didn’t know! Some people even make them from cake, if you happen to have too much of that. If you’re into spicier croutons, there are tons of those too!

Moving out of these applications, you can’t go wrong with panzanella. Don’t think you’ve got to do it all traditional-like, either. You make the bread salad you want to eat! In our house, we eat a fair bit of Lebanese fattoush. Crete has the lovely dakos, and you can’t forget spicy Eritrean fata!

Soups for using up stale or failed bread also abound! Tuscans have their pancotto and acquacotta, while Germans may delight in their brotsuppe! Tyurya, a Russian bread soup, is a fermenter’s dream soup. It’s typically got a kvass base (though you can be all fancy-like and use kefir, whey, or other soured milk), and gets lots of fermented veggies like krauts or radishes. Silesian wodzionka is a non-stressful bread soup, and the Italians also offer panada. Lastly, we really can’t forget Ethiopian fit-fit! As far as I understand it, there are non-injera versions as well. You certainly can adapt it to whatever bread you’re dealing with. If you don’t know Shaanxi paomo yet, I think you may want to!

Don’t forget your bread dumplings, which come in many forms, including this Czech houskový knedlík and German knödel.

Other random things to do with reject bread cubes include making stuffing/dressing or filling, soaking in coffee or milk if a sweeter kind of bread (or cornbread for the milk), Spanish-style migas, Balkan porridge popara, and fondue (because c’mon, you know you want to dip bread in melty cheeses!). Of course, some people really like bread sauce on their white meats, so yay for options!

The Best Things Since Sliced Bread

So you’ve got sliced bread to deal with, and don’t feel like cutting it into chunks? That’s okay! There are things to do with sliced bread, too! Of course, we all probably default to French toast, which also can make its way into the much loved Monte Cristo sandwich! If you didn’t know, French toast’s earliest recorded mention is from Apicius in 4th-ish century Rome! There are also vegan and dairy-free versions!

Beyond French toast, though, there’s still stuff to do. Andalusian gazpacho is an excellent choice, especially in the areas (like Houston, blech) that are already heating up! Let us not forget the beautiful Welsh rarebit I’d love someone to cook up for me! The ever-resourceful Gascons (who also came up with cassoulet) also like to use thick slices of stale bread as a sop for garbure! And from the comfort of your own home, it’s time for a trip to Portugal to sample their famous açorda as well. ‘Round the world we go, sampling ways to use up bread!

The Whole Loaf

Whole loaves, you say? You did bake a lot! Most of what’s going to happen with whole loaves is going to be bread bowls for soups, salads, and similar, but you can also get all medieval with it if that’s your thing. Trenchers are basically loaves of bread sliced in half and used as plates. The people with the highest status got the upper half of the loaves, which is where the term “upper crust” comes from when referencing socioeconomic status. You can hollow them out (or not!) for stews, porridges, and so forth, and won’t even have dishes to do afterward! Except your spoons and knives, of course! You also may wish to explore the South African bunny chow, which is curry filled loaves of deliciousness.

As for the video, I’m not even sure how I rabbit holed to it, and it’s amongst the top 5 weirdest videos I’ve ever seen. I’m mainly sharing it because misery loves company.

That’s Just How the Loaf Crumbles

Generally speaking, crumbs are what you’re probably going to use the most of. All you do to make crumbs is chop your bread up and give it a whirl in the food processor. If you’re hardcore about food waste, you’ll of course collect the crumbs each time you slice or tear your bread. As a general rule, anything “breaded” can be done with bread crumbs.

I very much hope this helps y’all work out how to deal with your botched loaves, extra loaves, stale loaves, and all the loaves! Happy baking and happy eating!