It’s hip to be cheap. Repurpose your day-old bread: Make these Crunchy Oven-Toasted Coutons for salads, soups and snacks.
Fashion’s fickle wheel cycles continuously and once more frugality is fashionable. Guess we’ve been ahead of our time for decades at Copywriters’ Kitchen where we always aim to save money and reduce food waste.
This recipe for Crunchy Oven-Toasted Croutons is a great way to use up drying baguettes, a half-eaten loaf of Italian bread—or virtually any kind of leftover bread growing stale in your kitchen.
These garlicky croutons add crunch and herby flavor to salads and soups—try them with Curried Long Island Cheese Pumpkin Soup. We also dip Oven-Toasted Croutons in vinaigrette or Caesar dressing as a snack.
Few things make me veer faster from a recipe than a “low-fat” claim. In my admittedly prejudiced mind, “low-fat” and “no-fat” food delivers low and no flavor. These croutons are an exception. Because they cook in the oven—rather than a skillet with copious quantities of oil, as with traditional pan-fried croutons—Oven-Toasted Croutons use very little oil.
Crunchy Oven-Toasted Croutons Recipe
½ loaf—about 4 cups—day-old Italian bread or other leftover bread, cut into ½” cubes.
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon oregano
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Slice bread and cut into ½” cubes, see photos below.
- In large oven-proof skillet, heat oil over medium flame.
- Toss bread cubes to coat with oil.
- Season with salt and spice, stirring to incorporate.
- Lower flame slightly and sauté bread for 1-minute, stirring constantly to keep bread cubes from burning.
- Put skillet into the oven and bake bread cubes for 4-5 minutes.
- Slide rack out and toss bread cubes to help them brown evenly. Slide rack back and bake croutons for another 4-5 minutes, checking often to make sure they don’t burn.
- Remove croutons from oven and cool before eating or storing in an air-tight container. If storing for more than a few days, place croutons in refrigerator or freezer.
Makes about 4 cups of croutons.
Hi, Used my stale cheese bread to make the croutons. Turned out great. I had one enevelope of Lipton Savory Herb with Garlic which I used in place of the seasonsing and it turned out great
Since I do like highly seasoned everything, next time I will use your seasoning measurements plus the Lipton Recipe Secrets package.
Thanks
Hi Brenda,
This recipe is one of those basics that cries for improvisation–your cheesy savory herb version sounds yum.
As it happens, I’m making a fresh batch of croutons today. I’m serving them with Anything Goes Gazapacho–will post this cold soup recipe tomorrow.
Thanks for dropping by!
I just cooked this recipe and it’s great as I need it quick for my Lobster Bisque. Thank you for sharing!
Glad you liked the Croutons, Pixen!
I made a pizza dough that didn’t turn out quite right (too much flour, I think). Found your recipe, baked the remaining dough into a small loaf, chopped it up (exactly four cups!) and made the best. croutons. ever. I added a little fennel, thyme, rosemary and asiago cheese. Thank you so much for the recipe; I’ll never waste not-quite-right dough again.
You’re most welcome, Lissa. Your additions sound delish!
Thank you for the recipe. It works really well with my left-over sourdough.
@xinda: Mmm, sourdough croutons sound yummy. I make this recipe often in the summer. We eat salads almost every night and crunchy croutons really make greens special. Also love to dip croutons in From-Scratch Caesar Salad Dressing http:https://www.copywriterskitchen.com/dev/2010/06/03/from-scratch-caesar-salad-dressing-recipe/
Your recipe looks good! I did notice that your title on google (the SEO title, perhaps?) said “over-roasted” instead of “oven-roasted”, which caught my attention… overly roasted, or are they extra crunchy, or what does that mean? Maybe a mistake, but at least it did take me to your site! Haha!
@Terese: Eek! Thanks for drawing my attention to the error. Not sure how that happened–all my meta tags were correct, but I finally found the typo in the backend of the blog, waaay at the bottom of the page. It’s now corrected–but I wonder if “oven-roasted” croutons will be as appealing as “over-roasted!”
I usually read a dozen or so recipes before picking one (or a combination of several), but yours is the first I read and I’m going right into the kitchen to use up my leftover sourdough loaf. I’ll be back to tell you how they came out. Thanks!
Okay, they are done and I had to pop a hot one right into my mouth. Delicious! I changed up the spices to my personal taste and spice cabinet; that’s one of the things I loved right away about his recipe. I’ll be sharing…the recipe but maybe not the croutons.
@Ruth: Thanks for letting me know how the croutons turned out. Curious about the spices you chose. Must admit I’m in a bit of an oregano rut right now…
Funny you should mention oregano…I used 1 tsp. of the Penzey’s spice Tuscan Sunset* as a sub for the oregano to give the croutons even more of an Italian kick. I did use more of that and less of the paprika and less of the garlic powder.
*contains basil, oregano, red bell pepper, garlic, thyme, fennel, black pepper & anise.
Hi Rebecca, Thanks for the recipe for the rsteaod chickpeas. They are really good. A great crunchy snack. Mine got soggy the next day though. I was wondering if you have any tips for this problem. I might have put them into a container and closed the lid while they were just slightly warm.