I also add leftover pasta sauces to the mix of dried breadcrumbs, such as a spag bol ragu (although any sauce will work), for what I now call Boum-boum sausages, (named for the twist on the French croque monsieur with bolognese sauce). I wanted to give you a couple of recipes where breadcrumbs have something of a starring role, such as my adaptation of Jane Grigson's classic Glamorgan Sausages - meatless sausages of breadcrumbs, cheese and leeks. Stale bread's properties can be celebrated as a virtue in the way that it absorbs moisture and flavours in a simple panzanella or fattoush salad or as a brilliant savoury bread pudding to accompany a Sunday roast or a sweet bread and butter pudding for 'afters' - happily crossing flavour boundaries, from sweet to savoury. They are an excellent filling for various vegetables from mushrooms to tomatoes and courgettes and they are an excellent topping for any baked dish such as macaroni cheese. I use breadcrumbs in a corrective way too, to thicken sauces and stews as well as to absorb excess moisture when I am making things such as courgette fritters. They act as a delicious protective coating to seal in both flavour and juices in dishes such as the retro classic chicken kiev or in schnitzels. They are used as a binding agent (in meatballs and sausages).

Stale bread and breadcrumbs serve several purposes in the kitchen. When life gives you a bread disaster, you make breadcrumbs, one of my favourite kitchen staples. Loaves last very well this way.Įven when some of my loaves don't turn out so well, they can be sacrificed to the altar of thrift. I wrap mine in a clean, cotton-tea towel (one that isn't too fragrant with soap powder or fabric softener!). As Emma Marsh suggested, I don't keep my bread in the fridge (its enemy) but in a bread bin. I think that I am lucky that I've always got a loaf 'on the go'. I feel as if I have learned the magic of a particular alchemy that stale bread and breadcrumbs demonstrate how they transmute even the plainest of dishes to something rather special I hope it has made me a better cook. Stale bread and breadcrumbs have become a key building-block in my cooking, one that previously I had regarded as a disposable, uninteresting and trifling ingredient. But assuming that a loaf lasts long enough in my household to harden, then it is definitely earmarked for good things. Yes, my home baked bread becomes stale through loss of moisture relatively quickly as opposed to the type of squishy factory-made bread that rarely hardens but will inevitably become blue with mould.

') Once I started baking, I began to better understand bread and its wonderful qualities. I confess that I make my own sourdough bread (cue readers' eye-rolling and thoughts of 'of course you are, you're a Guardian reader. Because 'stale' bread does not necessarily taste 'stale' - these are two entirely separate conditions. I suspect part of the problem is how we also define what is 'stale'. I understand that you might not like the crusts, or that perhaps the bread is looking a bit dried out or past its sell-by, but that is not necessarily a reason for throwing it out. O f all the foodstuffs that we throw away, I think that bread is the one most sinned against.

Sourdough treacle tart