SC - Bread Crumb Thickening

[Decker, Terry D.]

A standard 1 pound loaf of wheat bread will last about four days unwrapped
and uncut, two days if cut.  After that, they make excellent bread crumbs,
which seem to thicken better than the commercial breadcrumbs.  

After I serve a homemade bread at a dinner party, I often make breadcrumbs
from the leftover slices.  By the following day, they are dry enough to
grind into fine breadcrumbs.

Bear

> Probably not. I don't have a lot of experience with storing leftover
> bread-thickened sauces, but I get the feeling that while 
> stale bread is
> what is often intended in a lot of period recipes, completely 
> dry bread,
> akin to commercial croutons or zweibeck crumbs, are not generally what
> is intended, unless specifically mentioned. Some recipes do 
> tell you to
> toast the bread on the gridiron before using it in a 
> dark-colored sauce,
> and many don't, but a large number of them seem to call for 
> the bread to
> be steeped for an unspecified length of time in vinegar, 
> wine, water, or broth.
> 
> 
> Adamantius