‘There are only two slices of bread left, Mum. And one of them is the heel. How did that happen?’ This is my eldest on a Sunday night, considering the paucity of his Monday-morning breakfast. For me, this is a success. We haven’t wasted any bread.
Bread is fundamental, hallowed in many cultures, as important as water. But we can also take it for granted. Bread means ‘toast and sandwiches’, not a ‘proper’ meal. You probably think nothing of chucking away the last few slices of a loaf and perhaps you always throw out what is known in my house as the heel (the end slices).
I don’t like throwing bread away, not just because I dislike waste but because bread signals possibilities. Its chief asset, apart from being an edible plate, is its porous nature. It is a sucker-up of liquid, a carrier of flavours. In fact, bread is so good at this that it can be difficult to recognise it.
‘Panade’ is a cookery term for a soft mixture of breadcrumbs and liquid, usually milk, that is added to minced meat to keep it moist. It goes into burgers and meatballs, but it can also be a dish in itself.
I first tasted panade at Zuni Café, the much-celebrated restaurant in San Francisco. There, they make it with torn chunks of peasant-style bread, soft onions, Swiss chard and chicken stock.
No eggs are required, the bread just slowly sucks up the stock as it cooks until you have an umami-rich and melting mass. The bread’s flavour contributes to the dish, and it provides body. An eggless bread pudding? Who cares what it’s called when it tastes this good.
The same approach is used for thick soups. My favourite is from the Val d’Aosta in northern Italy. Cabbage and, in my version, root vegetables are layered with bread, stock and melting fontina cheese. It isn’t just your spoon that sinks into this, your soul does too.
In German and Eastern European bread dumplings and Italian canederli, the bread has to do the opposite: it must keep its shape, not collapse. Canederli are made from breadcrumbs, sautéed shallot or onion, herbs, maybe bacon, and egg. The trick is to keep them light, to avoid compressing the bread as you’re shaping them.
This was another dish I ordered without knowing what it was. They were just a word on a menu on a bitterly cold day in Italy. The gnocchi-like balls arrived in melted butter with a fluffy shower of finely grated Parmesan. They’re easier to make than potato or ricotta gnocchi, so get ready to try them.
The most surprising use of bread, I learnt through cooking Catalan food. Picada is the name of a mixture – pounded fried bread, nuts, garlic, herbs, olive oil and sometimes booze – that thickens juices and heightens flavours towards the end of a cooking time. I used to use it only as a thickener, adding big spoonfuls to cassoulet or pots of braised pork or lamb whose juices were thinner than I wanted.
Picada adds body without creating the gloopy texture you get from using flour as a thickener. In fact, any braise that calls for beurre manié, a mixture of butter mashed with flour that’s whisked into a dish to thicken it near the end of its cooking time, can be finished with picada instead. It can also act as a kind of gremolata, adding a final burst of flavour in that way.
Pain perdu, aka French toast or ‘eggy bread’, once a cheap way of using up old bread, has lost its frugal image as it’s become the darling of weekend brunches. Eating it drenched with maple syrup is the least you can do with it.
I have even seen it on pudding menus, most recently as ‘Bakewell’ French toast, stuffed with frangipane and jam. And do I even need to describe bread-and-butter pudding, the dessert I have cooked more than any other? Bread: a world of possibilities.
Do you have any tricks for using up leftover bread? Share your recipes in the comments
"bread" - Google News
March 11, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Forget toast and sandwiches, these dishes prove bread is food of the gods - The Telegraph
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