Our best recipes for stale bread will make you everything from crunchy croutons and crispy pita chips to French toast and a panzanella salad for the delicious Tuscan-style bread and tomato salad. If you’re like us and towards the end of the week have slightly stale bread, in our cases, sourdough ends, then try our best stale bread recipes.
Whether it’s that second baguette you bought that didn’t get used, ends of your home-baked sourdough that get wasted every few days, last few slices of an expensive artisanal bakery loaf, or store-bought loaf of sliced white, all can be used to make homemade croutons and there are so many ways to use croutons to add texture to salads, soups, pastas, and more.
I love to top whole croutons or pound croutons in a mortar and pestle to create crunchy crouton crumbs to sprinkle on soups such as this spiced pumpkin soup, my broccoli and potato soup, this potato and bacon soup or loaded baked potato soup.
Combined with fresh herbs, a drizzle on a decent extra virgin olive oil, a shake of chilli flakes, a grind of cracked black pepper, a sprinkle of crispy fried shallots, and dollops of sour cream, crumbled croutons add lots of texture and flavour.
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Best Recipes for Stale Bread – Easy Stale Bread Recipes from Croutons to French Toast
Our best recipes to use up stale bread include everything from French Toast to Tuscan bread soup, but first a quick guide to how to make croutons from stale bread.
How to Make Croutons from Stale Bread So Good You’ll Want to Snack on Them
Our guide to how to make croutons from stale bread that taste so good you’ll want to snack on them is one of our best recipes for stale bread and it will ensure you don’t waste days-old bread again.
Homemade croutons taste so much better than store-bought croutons, they last for ages, and they are super versatile, adding texture and crunch to soups, salads and pastas.
We always make sure we have some croutons on hand – they last for weeks in well-sealed glass jars or air-tight containers – and these homemade croutons taste so delicious, you’ll be saving bread just to make them.
We add croutons to everything from Spanish gazpacho and French onion soup to a Caesar salad, sprinkle crumbly crouton crumbs on pastas such as carbonara, and use croutons as a vehicle for Spanish tapas, such as potato tortilla slices, and Basque pintxos.
How to Make Croutons from Stale Bread So Good You’ll Want to Snack on Them
Homemade Pita Chips Recipe for Crunchy Baked Pita Crisps
This quick and easy homemade pita chips recipe will make you super crunchy baked pita crisps that are made within minutes and it’s another of our best recipes for stale bread. In this case, stale pita bread.
These pita crisps are perfect for scooping up homemade dips such as hummus, baba ghanoush, guacamole, and salsas, or using in the Arabic salad, fattoush, for which we’ve got a recipe for you, below.
They’re also versatile – brush the stale pita bread with olive oil flavoured with different spices and herbs to complement the dips or dishes that you’re serving the pita chips with or leave them plain as we do them for fattoush.
Do use a good quality extra virgin olive oil and combine it with your seasoning and spices in a small bowl (don’t sprinkle the spices on separately, as they’ll distribute more evenly on your pita crisps if in the olive oil. You really don’t need to use a lot of olive oil, just brush it on lightly with a silicone pastry brush to distribute evenly.
Easy Homemade Pita Chips Recipe for Crunchy Baked Pita Crisps Made in Minutes
Panzanella Salad Recipe for a Tuscan Style Bread and Tomato Salad
This easy panzanella salad recipe makes the delicious Tuscan style bread and tomato salad that tastes of summer in Italy and it’s one of the best recipes for stale bread.
A bread salad with onions and cucumbers before tomatoes arrived in Italy, it makes use of stale bread, the hallmark of povera cucina, the no-waste cooking of the countryside.
It’s one of those quintessentially ‘less is more’ Italian dishes consisting of little else but sweet ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, zingy onions, aromatic basil, extra virgin olive oil and vinegar, and… stale days-old bread.
Because panzanella exemplifies what la cucina povera was all about. Quite literally ‘poor cooking’ or ‘poor kitchen’, historically it was ‘peasant food’ but these days is associated with the food of the Italian countryside, which is rooted in seasonality and a no-waste philosophy.
Panzanella Salad Recipe for the Tuscan Bread and Tomato Salad that Tastes of Summer in Italy
Russian French Toast Recipe Just Like My Baboushka Made
My Russian French toast recipe makes grenki (Гренки) just like my Russian-Ukrainian grandmother and mother made and it’s another of our best recipes for stale bread.
Essentially, grenki is the Russian take on French toast and not only is it incredibly easy to make, with only a handful of ingredients, it’s versatile.
You could make this traditional Russian French toast recipe for breakfast, brunch or dessert as a sweet French toast, with sugar honey, golden syrup or maple syrup, or sour cream and stewed berries or fruit jam.
Or you can make a savoury Russian French toast, serving it as an accompaniment to smoked salmon topped with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkled with fresh aromatic dill, or as a side to a grilled breakfast of sausages, ham and tomatoes.
Russian French Toast Recipe for Grenki Just Like My Russian Grandmother Made
Savoury French Toast Recipe with Pan-Fried Cherry Tomatoes
Our savoury French toast recipe makes classic French toast – fried bread that’s been soaked in a beaten egg and milk mixture – flavoured with garlic, onion, sea salt, pepper, and a little chilli, piled with pan-fried cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and fragrant dill.
This French toast recipe makes a fabulous weekend breakfast, brunch or lunch dish and one of our best stale bread recipes. French toast didn’t start out French at all.
Although of course the French made what the British call ‘eggy bread’ their own and named it pain perdu or ‘lost bread’ as it was made with stale bread.
The oldest French toast recipe is in the Roman recipe book Apicius, dating to the 1st century, which says to: “Break [slice] fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces which soak in milk [and beaten eggs] fry in oil, cover with honey and serve”.
During the 14th and 15th century there were French toast recipes in German, French and Italian cookbooks. I grew up thinking French toast was Russian and called grenki, because my baboushka made it for me when I stayed with my Russian grandparents during school holidays
Savoury French Toast Recipe With Pan-Fried Cherry Tomatoes, Feta Cheese and Fresh Herbs
Fattoush Salad Recipe with Pita Chips Made from Stale Pita Bread
This classic fattoush salad recipe makes a traditional Lebanese village salad of ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers, zingy radishes, fresh fragrant herbs, and quintessential Mediterranean ingredients such as extra virgin olive oil, and it’s another of our best recipes for stale pita bread.
Tossed in a delightful salad dressing distinguished by the beloved Middle Eastern ingredients of pomegranate seeds and ground sumac, fattoush is often called a pita bread salad, as it’s textured with crispy pita chips.
There are instructions for making super simple unseasoned pita chips from scratch in the fattoush recipe in the post, below, but if you want to make pita crisps flavoured with spices, see the recipe above.
Fattoush is traditionally eaten with Arabic mezze and grilled meats, which makes it perfect for those in the southern hemisphere gearing up for a season of summertime barbecues. See our recipes for beef kofta, hummus and baba ganoush, and our summer salad recipes here.
Fattoush Salad Recipe for a Traditional Lebanese Village Salad
Ribollita Soup Recipe for a Hearty Tuscan Style Bread Soup
Our classic ribollita soup recipe makes the Tuscan bean, kale and bread soup, invented to use up leftovers, including days-old bread, and it’s another of our best recipes for stale bread.
‘Ribollita’ means ‘re-boiled’ in Italian and traditionally this hearty vegetarian broth was made with leftover soup, such as minestrone or white bean soup that was re-boiled with old bread.
If you love soups as much as I do – fish soups, chicken soups, noodle soups, chicken noodle soups, warming winter soups, cold summer soups, I adore them all – then you’re going to love this ribollita recipe made from scratch, using stale sourdough bread, but you can use any country-style bread.
It’s another fantastic example of a dish of Italy’s ‘cucina povera’, the traditional cooking of the countryside that I mentioned above, which was born out of poverty and frugality, yet resulted in some of Italy’s most delicious specialties.
Classic Ribollita Soup Recipe for a Hearty Tuscan Style Bean, Kale and Bread Soup
Basque Garlic Soup Recipe
This Basque garlic soup recipe makes a gently spiced bread and egg drop soup that’s deliciously rich and hearty, and it makes yet another of our best stale bread recipes.
The creamy texture comes courtesy of whisked eggs drizzled into the broth and the deep flavours are thanks to generous amounts of garlic, paprika and sherry vinegar. Ground chillies give the warming soup an extra kick of heat.
You’re going to enjoy this gently spiced garlic soup, especially if you like the hearty European rustic bread soups, which were invented to use up stale bread.
If you’re also a fan of egg drop soups, such as the classic Chinese egg drop soup, where beaten eggs are slowly dropped into the hot soup so they leave delicate trails of creamy egg, which enrich the soup, then you’re definitely going to love this.
Basque Garlic Soup Recipe for a Gently Spiced Bread and Egg Drop Soup
Please do let us know if you make any of our best recipes for stale bread as we’d love to know how they turn out for you.
