Of Croutons, Rusks, and Pain Perdu

I've thrown out my share of bread in my time, I'm not proud to admit.  There are times, especially in winter, when the indoor air is so utterly arid that a half a loaf may linger on the bread board until it is so petrified, you could hammer nails with it.  There are ways to salvage such an artifact, as peasant folk all over the bread-eating world know, but they're not necessarily the most delicious ways to enjoy bread.  I'll turn to these extreme methods once or twice a year, and feel virtuous for it, but a certain amount of bread does see the inside of the trash can in our house.

I'm trying to turn over a new leaf in this regard, and here's my approach:  If there's bread left from the previous baking when I bring out the starter to begin a new batch, the stale bread gets re-purposed.  One truly delightful re-use of old bread is to make croutons and rusks.  No point in discoursing broadly on the uses of the crouton, except to say that homemade croutons made from excellent bread have about as much in common with the store-bought kind as a Smithfield ham has with Oscar Mayer pre-sliced deli meat.  C'est a dire:  nada.

Rusks, on the other hand, may be less well known.  Basically, it's twice-baked bread.  When I cut up a loaf of bread for re-purposing, I cube up the crumb for croutons, and the crusty part (with a bit of interior included), I cut into strips about three inches long and three-quarters to one inch wide.  Croutons and rusks all get baked together, tossed in olive oil, with perhaps a crushed clove of garlic or two, some herbs (thyme or rosemary, classic) in a 400-degree oven for about ten minutes, check and stir after five.  Once baked and cooled, I keep them in a plastic bag--just tasted a couple samples from last week's batch with my tea:  excellent.

Rusks are good to nibble on their own, or to dip into anything dippable--tapenade, hummus, bagna cauda, baba ganoush.  Rusks and something to dip into make a delightful happy hour snack.

And then, of course, the other best-loved way to polish off past-its-prime bread is what we call French toast, and the French call pain perdu, "lost bread."  I sprang from the bed one morning this past weekend and got straight on to concocting a batch.  Along with some fried Bide-A-Wee apple slices (we've had some excellent keepers from last year's harvest), and some home-smoked bacon, a fine way to start the day--with a contented belly and the satisfaction of having done the best by an honorable loaf.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

A Sunny Soup for Winter; The Redemption of Dead Bread

One good thing about the dry indoor air of a northern home in winter: bread does not tend to get moldy. One bad thing: it dries out faster than you can say pain au levain. I throw away a certain amount of bread, I have to admit. Not proud of it, but there you go. I love the crust too much, so I will not plastic-bag my bread. Comes a time, then, that the last quarter of a batard, or a good-sized heel of a boule, becomes absolutely petrified, slicing is out of the question, you'd need a sledge hammer to penetrate the crust.

So a certain amount of dead bread hits the trash can here, but last week I found myself with an entire large batard of what had been delicious mixed-grain levain that had made the trip to Bide-A-Wee and back, then languished on our Saint Paul counter for a few days. When I finally took it out of the bag it was more suitable for inflicting blunt-force trauma than for sandwiches or toast.

But I couldn't toss it--a whole uncut loaf of bread? Not a chance. I recalled something I had read, I think it was from a Madeleine Kamman book, how in mountainous regions of France they do a massive baking after the wheat harvest in the autumn, and those loaves are then dried in the cool, dry mountain air, and then used through the winter. On top of that, it just so happened that Mary had encountered a similar account in the book she's now reading, Emilie Carles's memoir, A Life of Her Own (the original French title is way better: Une Soupe aux Herbe Sauvages). She writes:

This bread was meant to last the whole winter, and we carried it to the hayloft where we spread it out on the huge hanging trestles, and we'd go fetch it up there as needed. Obviously, it was as hard as wood; to soften it ahead of time, we'd hang a few loaves in the sheep pen, just above the sheep. The heat and humidity softened it to a point, but it was a far cry from fresh bread and from one end of winter to the other, we ate it stale. We used a special knife, yet it was so hard to cut that it shattered into fragments that scattered to the four corners of the kitchen. But it was good: that bread had an extraordinary smell, and what a taste! My sisters and I fought over the crusts, sucking on that bread with as much delight as if it had been cake. Dunked in café au lait, it was a feast.

Can we even begin to imagine that kind of life, that kind of approach to food and eating? It seems quaint and charming, appealing in a way, a bit repulsive in another (could that "extraordinary smell" and the fact that the loaves were softened in the sheep pen be at all related...?). Well, I love the idea of making something wonderful from what seem unpromising ingredients--that's the magic of good, simple cooking.



Dry bread immediately makes me think of soup, but I needed to treat the bread some way first, lest it empty the soup bowl of all liquid like a sponge. I took my rock-hard loaf and rended it into pieces with bread knife, cleaver, and brute force. I put the pieces in a big mixing bowl, and poured in some water, let it absorb. I checked back a couple of times, broke up the larger chunks, added a bit more water. When it somewhat resembled bread again, rather than rubble, I fried the pieces in a lot of olive oil with a couple of crushed cloves of garlic--this would be the richest part of my soup, along with the cheese. And now, I bet some of you are nodding and smiling right now, because you know what I'm going to say next: That old dead bread, shredded to raggedy pieces and fried, was uncommonly delicious. I had to stop myself snacking on it, or there would be none left for lunch.

In honor of the bare-bones salvage simplicity of my croutons, the soup itself had to be equally spare--just some oven tomatoes* from the freezer, stock, and a grating of cheese.

Salut! A splendid result. I won't be throwing away much dead bread from now on.



Winter Tomato Soup with Fried Bread
Serves two

6 ounces stale bread, preferably a whole grain levain type—something with character
12 ounces oven tomatoes (or excellent canned)
1 1/2 cups stock
¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small onion, sliced
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Grated gruyere or similar

If your bread is merely stale, just cut or tear it into chunks roughly 2 inches square. If the bread is very, very dry, break it into large pieces and toss it in a bowl with ¾ cup of water and cover the bowl with a plate. Let stand 2 hours, mixing occasionally. If the bread soaks up all the water before it’s soft, add a bit more. If it gets waterlogged squeeze it like a sponge to extract excess water. When you have something workable, cut or tear it into 2 inch pieces.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet and add the bread and crushed garlic cloves. Fry the bread until nicely golden and a bit crisp. Remove garlic add the sliced onion. Cook until the onion wilts a bit.

Divide the bread into 2 soup bowls. To the skillet add the tomatoes, stock, salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes. Taste for salt. Spoon the tomatoes over the bread and top with grated cheese.

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* Here's my method for those, for future reference; won't do you much good right now, but the pictures are pretty. I've altered the recipe somewhat; I now peel the tomatoes prebaking, and I don't cook them down quite so much, to leave distinct chunks.

Here's a little ode to heirloom tomatoes from a while back, too.


Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

A Baker's Stuffing

This is what our breadboard often looks like. It's kind of gross, I know. Sorry. There's a piece of our cornmeal bread, some currant-stout, honey whole grain, even some brioche that I pulled out of the freezer. Much of it was well past sandwich quality, or even toast. But with a little help from the garden, market, and larder...

...all that dead bread can be transformed into something rather edible:

We served this with a piece of lamb leg pan-roasted over carrots and leeks. It was a trial run for turkey day. It hardly matters how dry the bread is. As long as you can still cut it up, it will be fine (we had a piece of French batard that was well beyond saving--absolutely petrified). Use good bread in your stuffing, dressing, whatever you like to call it. It makes all the difference in the world. Only problem is, stuffing this good might upstage the bird.

Simple Bread Stuffing with Bacon and Root Vegetables

serves four to six

12 ounces dry bread, in 3/4-inch cubes, 7 or 8 cups (an assortment adds interest)

3 1/2 ounces thick-cut bacon--2 or 3 slices--diced

half a small celery root, in 1/4-inch dice (use some of the green stalks, too--mince these--and some chopped leaves if they're not too bitter)

2 small carrots, in 1/4-inch dice

1 small leek, chopped

1/2 a medium onion, chopped

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

1 Tbsp each fresh chopped thyme and sage

salt and pepper

1 cup chicken stock

1 Tbsp butter

1/4 tsp piment d'espelette or hot paprika, or 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Preheat your oven to 375. In a large skillet slowly cook the bacon over medium heat until most of the fat has rendered and the bacon is lightly brown. Remove the bacon from the pan. Leave one tablespoon of bacon fat in the pan, and add the one tablespoon of butter. Add the celery root and minced tops, carrots, leek, onion, and sauté until the vegetables are lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more.

In a large mixing bowl combine the bread with the sautéed vegetables, the bacon, the herbs, the piment or paprika, a good dash of salt and several grinds of pepper, and the chicken stock. Mix well, cover with a lid or a plate and let stand for ten minutes. Check to see that the bread is nicely softened. If it seems too dry add another 1/4 cup of stock or water. Mix well once more, and spoon the mixture into a casserole or gratin dish.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the stuffing is well browned on top and hot throughout. Those Stovetop Stuffing people have one thing right: There's no reason to serve this only once or twice a year. It's a wonderful, simple dish that's great throughout the colder months...in which we are now firmly ensconced.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw

A la Recherche du Pain Perdu

I got into the local food world through the little home-based bakery that my wife Mary and I run, Real Bread, but so far I haven't said much about bread in these...pages, can we say? The recipe you'll find below, Choucroute Bread Pudding (or Sauerkraut Stuffing, by a humbler name) combines the products of several of my favorite culinary activities: baking, smoking, and fermenting. (Choucroute is the French word for sauerkraut; choucroute garnie is the famous Alsatian dish of braised 'kraut and smoked and cured pork products.)

It's a way of using up what around here we refer to as "dead bread," the heels that were never claimed, the uneaten slices of baguette that dry up on the dinner table overnight, that sort of thing. Specifically, pain perdu, which is French for "lost bread," is what we call French toast. I'm taking the term here in a more general sense (and because I couldn't resist the Proustian allusion; now that I've actually mentioned Proust, is it still an allusion?). Anyway: This savory treatment is another way of effecting a very positive reversal of fortune for crusts that have fallen on hard times.

Although the bread in this dish is "dead," it still has to be good. Just as lousy bread makes a lousy sandwich, mediocre croutons make a soggy, forgettable stuffing. This dish is best when made with a variety of breads. Use some rye, if possible, or other whole grain bread. When you can combine--as I did for this dish most recently--pain de campagne, Danish rye, currant-stout bread, chestnut bread, baguette, Swedish rye, and brioche, the result is excellent, if I do say so myself. Mary agreed. I love this dish, and Mary is even more enthusiastic about it than I am.

Giving credit where credit is due, I've channeled this recipe through two very fine local chefs, Isaac Becker of the 112 Eatery in downtown Minneapolis, and Mike Phillips of The Craftsman restaurant in south Minneapolis. When the 112 Eatery opened a couple of years ago, there was a choucroute bread pudding on the menu, and I recall seeing it described as a "signature dish" in at least one review. For a signature dish, it didn't stick around very long. It was great, but it hasn't been on the menu for a long while now.

Then this past December a version of it resurfaced, having gone south to Lake Street and found suitable wintering grounds nestled up against an amazing double-cut Fisher Farm pork chop and flanked by addictively delicious espresso baked beans on Mike Phillips' comforting cold-weather menu at The Craftsman.

I'm calling this a pudding, though it contains no eggs and no milk or cream. It highlights the flavor and texture of the bread, particularly the savory, toothsome crusts. The tartness of the 'kraut contrasts to those flavors, and lightens what could be a heavy dish. Though it's similar to a classic Thanksgiving dressing, it's more assertive than most side dishes. In fact, I think that if you propped a poached egg or two on top of a serving and piled a bit of salad on the side, it could easily become a main course.

I've even included suggestions for making it a vegetarian dish, because, while my previous post might seem to belie it, I know and like many vegetarians, and I respect everyone's dietary choices. I just don't see how you can get the full joy out of life without bacon, is all....

You'll need to amass a certain amount of bread for this dish. It should be pretty dang dry, and once it is dry, it will keep indefinitely. The perfect environment for drying out bread, as many of you know, is a Minnesota home in winter! That super-dry heated air sucks the moisture out of everything. So if you find that part of a loaf went neglected a couple of days too long, cube it up before it's petrified (even if it's petrified, you can still salvage it with a good strong knife and your bold, but cautious, resolve), leave it out for another day or two, then put it in a plastic bag. In these dry, cool winter conditions there's little chance of it molding. But to be safe you might want to put the croutons in the freezer if you don't plan to use them pretty quickly; in summer the freezer is an excellent way to prevent spoilage.

Of course you can also dry your croutons in a low oven before using or storing them.

We are terrible about eating leftovers. Since we generally have a fair amount of bread around, I have to confess that I've thrown out more stale bread than I care to admit. A further confession: I am not a big fan of sweet bread puddings. But since discovering this savory way of reviving lost bread, we hoard every crust jealously and plan meals around it.

Homemade sauerkraut is almost a different entity altogether from the store-bought stuff, but if you don't have homemade use the 'kraut that comes in plastic bags rather than the canned kind. If you have a deli with a northern or eastern European slant, see what they might have. Here in the Twin Cities I would try Kramarczuk's in northeast Minneapolis, or Kiev Foods in the Sibley Plaza shopping center on West 7th in Saint Paul.
For future reference, there are instructions for making your own 'kraut in quart jars below. It's ridiculously easy. And it's fermented!

Two more brief asides: If you're serving this alongside a fowl that came with giblets, chop them up--gizzard, heart, and liver, all--and sauté them in the bacon fat along with the vegetables till they're nicely browned.

Aside #2, The Vegetarian Option: Leave out the bacon. Duh. Use vegetable stock instead of chicken. Sauté about four ounces of mushrooms, any kind you like, until they are nicely browned and concentrated in flavor. This sort of replaces the bacon. Sort of. Dried mushrooms--shitake, porcini, chanterelles, would also be really good in this. Adding a few more vegetables would fill this out into a veritable bread-veg casserole. Fresh cabbage, carrots, eggplant, kale, celery root--all would be fine additions. Just be sure everything is precooked and well browned for that deep umami flavor.
Choucroute Bread Pudding (Sauerkraut Stuffing)
Serves four to six

5 cups dry bread cubes (3/4" to 1" croutons), 12 to 14 ounces
2 1/2 ounces home-smoked bacon (or 2 or 3 slices thick bacon), cut into 1/4" by 1/4" by 1/2" lardons
1 medium onion, about 6 ounces, roughly chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 tightly packed cup sauerkraut, preferably homemade
1/4 tsp dried thyme
5 or 6 leaves sage, chopped
salt and pepper
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
1/4 cup dry white wine or dry vermouth (optional for deglazing the skillet)
Butter to grease the baking dish

In a skillet, cook the bacon gently over medium heat until most of the fat is rendered and the bacon is lightly browned. Remove the bacon from the skillet and reserve. Add the onion and celery and cook until the onion is translucent, about five minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes.

Put the bread cubes in a large mixing bowl and add the bacon and vegetables. Deglaze the skillet with the wine or vermouth if you like; reduce the wine a bit, then add to the bread mixture and stir well. Add the thyme and sage, a few grinds of pepper and a good pinch of salt.

Rinse the sauerkraut a couple of times, then squeeze it in your hands to remove some of the liquid. Chop it coarsely and stir it into the bread mixture.

Add 1 1/2 cups chicken stock and mix well. Cover the mixture (I invert a plate over the stuffing) and let sit at least 20 minutes to let the bread absorb the stock. After 20 minutes mix again and check a few cubes of bread by pinching them with your fingers. They should be moistened and somewhat softened. Add more stock if needed.

Liberally butter a six-cup baking dish, gratin, etc. Add the bread mixture. Bake at 375 for 30 to 40 minutes, until the top is nicely browned.

Sauerkraut Made in Jars
Adapted from The Country Gourmet
Makes 2 quarts

5 pounds cabbage
3 1/2 Tablespoons canning or sea salt

Remove outer dirty or damaged leaves from cabbage. Quarter, core, and shred the cabbage. I like a range of thicknesses, which I get naturally by shredding with a knife. You may also use a mandolin or 'kraut cutter.

Place the cabbage in a large bowl and toss with the salt. Let it sit a while to express some juice. Pack solidly into quart jars. Fill to within one inch of the top. If there's not enough liquid to cover the cabbage, add a little cold water. Put the lids and bands on, and tighten the bands not quite as much as you possibly can--tight but not super-tight.

Place the jars on a platter to catch any overflow. Place in a coolish spot, around 60 degrees. The basement is fine. In just a day or two you'll notice bubbling and juice running over the top. If you're tempted to unscrew the lid to see how things are going, be careful! Juice can shoot out like from a shook-up Coke can.

In five to seven days the bubbling will die down and no more liquid will be coming out of the jar. Wash the jars and tighten down the lids. Then you can either refrigerate indefinitely, or process the jars in a water bath for 15 minutes, seal, and store in the pantry. It doesn't matter if the kraut isn't submerged in liquid at this point--it's preserved by the souring of fermentation.

I was a little worried that I wouldn't get around to writing about this dish while our wintry weather was still with us. No problem there. Here's what it looks like in Saint Paul today:


That white on the rooftops is not the glare of bright sun. We will certainly see snow into April this year, and I'm reminded of how, when I was a kid, I thought that if the groundhog saw his shadow, promising six more weeks of winter, that was the outcome to be hoped for. As winter drags on, everyone I talk to these days is looking for a little comfort, and this dish provides it. Do a good deed and help some poor lost bread find its way again.



Brett Laidlaw


copyright 2008 Brett Laidlaw