Many recipes — from French toast to bread pudding — call for leftover bread. But why would anyone want to cook with old bread that's hard and dry?
Eaten out of hand, day-old bread may taste inferior to its fresh counterpart. But stale bread actually has virtuous characteristics that can make it preferable to cook with. According to food science authority Harold McGee, when freshly baked bread cools, its starches reorganize to form bonds that are even firmer and stronger than they were before. This means that if the bread is soaked in a wet substance — such as eggs for French toast or milk for bread pudding — it will still retain its sponge-like structure rather than falling apart. Bread crumbs are an ideal binding agent in cooking for the same reason: even when wet, they will maintain structure.
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I think it's a different direction: early recipes didn't call for stale bread because it was a superior ingredient but because it was a thrifty way to make sure you wasted less food. I think those recipes sprang up as a way to utilize an otherwise lost ingredient (like heavy French sauces originally masking the taste of meat gone slightly off). The fact that we can choose stale bread as a superior ingredient today is but a happy coincidence.
1I had no idea!
2Cool! I thought it was just encouraging us to use old bread. Very interesting that it's actually better.
3DUH!
4Post New Comment
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