19 Stale Bread Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How to make stale bread? ›

Giving your bread a quick bake in a 350ºF oven will starve it of its moisture—which is exactly what you're looking for. Cut your loaf into evenly sized cubes or slices (depending on what you're making), and toast them, dry, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. Proceed with your recipe.

Stale bread is dry and hard. Bread will stale even in a moist environment, and stales most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing. While bread that has been frozen when fresh may be thawed acceptably, bread stored in a refrigerator will have increased staling rates.

Tip: How to Make Stale Bread Soft Enough to Use

Wash your stale loaf in some water, then put it in a 350°F oven for a few minutes. Yes, it will still taste stale—but it won't be rock-hard anymore, so you can slice or tear it.

Stale Bread and Stale Cereal Is Safe to Eat.

If there's no mold, it's fine to eat. You might consider making bread crumbs with stale bread, reviving it by running it under water and refreshing it in the oven, or add stale cereal into a snack bar recipe. There are lots of ways to waste less food.

But if you can't buy it within hours of baking or you can't eat it all the same day you buy it, you will have to deal with 'staling' or 'going stale'. This is a chemical and physical process that makes bread less tasty and makes it have a leathery texture.

Ideally, the bread should be slightly stale. A drier bread will soak up all the custard. Bread can be left out with the wrapper open the day before cooking. If you find yourself in a pinch, dry your bread slices in a 275°F oven for 10 minutes before soaking them in the custard.

Stale Bread Method: Dampen, Wrap in Aluminum Foil, Reheat at 300°F. This is the approach The Spruce Eats recommends for bringing back stale bread — dampen under the faucet, wrap the whole loaf in foil, and reheat for 15 minutes in a 300°F oven.

There's nothing sadder than a stale, unusable loaf of bread. Keep your bread fresh well past its best-by date by freezing it for later use.

Can you make stale bread in the microwave? ›

All you need to do is place your bread inside a damp paper towel, and microwave it on a plate for 10 seconds. The water will revive the starch molecules in the bread's flour, the reaction between the two will occur again, and you'll have your soft bread back.

To make stale bread soft again, place a cup of water in the microwave and put the bread in there with it. Depending on the bread, you may need to microwave it longer or shorter, but typically when I'm re-softening a chunk of a baguette it takes 30 seconds.

But over time, the starches undergo what is called retrogradation, meaning the starch granules give back some of their water, as it works its way to the surface of the loaf and evaporates. As this happens, the starches partially revert to their crystalline structure, which causes the bread to become hard and brittle.