Obviously, I don't intent to eat these two together and, in fact, I never even made them on the same day. As you may remember, yesterday I was eating croutons in Campbell's tomato soup. I have had this reoccurring issue every week of what to do with my bread after a few days. I have been trying a few different bread recipes, incorporating whole wheat flour, and just trying to find that perfect bread recipe. And all I have really found out is that I have already perfected my bread recipe and all the others aren't holding up to it. This means that I have bread going stale every week and I need to find something to do with it.
To further my bread problems, today, I'm making sour dough bread. The creature growing on my counter yesterday was the starter.
It looks like a hot mess but I hope it will be delicious.
I am officially out of yeast as of this starter yesterday so, naturally, I ordered some from a company online instead of just getting more at the store. I ordered two kinds of instant yeast from the Vanilla Food Company, red and gold. The product descriptions are here. Yeast is the most expensive part of making plain bread so I figured it was time to go bulk. I bought two pounds of yeast for only double the same amount I was paying for a small bottle in the stores.
Every now and then I get a fierce craving for something sweet. It is usually in the evening so I try not to indulge but sometimes the craving is strong than me. Introducing, Mug Cookies. I experimented with mug cakes while I was in Germany and had varied success but they had one big problem, they were big. Too big. They required an egg and multiple people to be down for some dessert which was harder to come by than you realize. This recipe requires neither. No egg, no partner in crime.
In a microwave safe mug, melt butter or margarine.
Add in the white and brown sugar, flour, baking soda, vanilla, and salt if you used unsalted butter. Skip the salt if you used margarine or salted butter.
Mix well. You will have a shiny doughy looking paste. Now toss in some chocolate chips. You can mix or just let them sit on top like I did here.
Microwave for 20 - 30 seconds and test. You can eat this as gooey as you can get it since there is no egg. Just cook the raw flour taste out and you are golden. The recipe is here and I provided a photo of the recipe below. It is way too easy and accessible, it's perfect. Once you make this a couple times you will have it memorized. Unless, you are me, then you will always need to check the recipe.
Look at that! If you don't cook it too long it is like warm cookie dough. If you cook it a bit longer it hardens up a bit into a warm cookie. Don't over cook! You want it to look really soft and gooey still. It will be SCREAMING hot when it comes out, let it cool a bit before that first bite.
Now, because mug cookies are so straight forward and simple, they don't require a lot of photos or make much of a blog post so I'll tell you how I used up my stale loaf ends. Every week I have bread that goes stale. I make one loaf a week and we rarely finish it before it gets hard. I have been freezing my crusts in preparation for stuffing. I have made bread crumbs. I have composted too much bread. Finally, I realized I should make croutons (thanks Tipsy Baker). I love croutons. I love salad with croutons, soup with croutons, onion soup (easily made with croutons) I don't know why I didn't think of this myself. Some day I might make bread pudding and french toast. Those are on my to-do with stale bread list now.
I had about three thick slices worth of bread and the crusty end. I cut this into bite-sized cubes. I didn't want my mouth shredded by trying to bite a big hunk of dry bread so I made them a bit smaller than one inch square.
I was going to make them plain but why? Peel some garlic.
Smash up that garlic how ever you do and get it heating in some oil in a large pan for about 30 seconds.
Toss in your stale bread cubes and toss well to even coat the bread until it soaks up all the garlic oil. Season with salt and toss again.
Pop the lot onto a tray and into the oven for 10 minutes at 325F until they are completely dry and slightly toasted. They will be sort of soft, chewy, and slightly crunchy when warm but they will get harder and even more crunchy as they cool. Serve in place of crackers with soups or in salads. I added a handful at a time to my mug of soup because I like that perfect moment between crunchy and soggy when the crouton has soaked up the soup but is still crisp when you bite into it. So good! These can be stored for weeks in a cookie tin as per the Tipsy Baker.
What do you do with your left-over, less than oven fresh bread?
