Written by Kate Tietjesometimes I crave the good old-fashioned taste of using those breadcrumbs.
But of course, the store breadcrumbs, at best, are not soaked. At worst, they contain HFCS and a lot of other food toxins. Needless to say, I don’t buy them.
For this, you can make your own bread (and it doesn’t matter if you are terrible at making bread — I used a batch that did not turn out when I made these), or you can purchase store-bought sprouted bread or real sourdough. It’s up to you. I’ve adapted my favorite whole wheat bread for soaking, and I used that.
As to soaking it, I mixed the water and about 4 cups of flour together and let it sit overnight. After that, I followed the butter, milk, honey, and salt directions, proofed the yeast, and poured it over the dough. Then I worked it in, adding about 1 cup additional sprouted flour. This worked out great. I tried a second way of doing it that was a failure, though…and that led to the most recent batch of breadcrumbs.
How to Make Breadcrumbs
Ingredients:
- 1 loaf of bread, sliced thinly or cut into chunks
- A blender (like Vitamix) or food processor
Directions:
Step 1: Cut your bread into chunks and set it somewhere to dry out. It should take 1 – 2 days. You can slice it, but mine was pretty much rock-hard, so I tore it like this:
Step 2: Once they’re dry, add some to the blender or food processor, filling no more than half full:
Step 3: Turn it on low at first, slowly turning it up as the pieces turn into smaller crumbs:
Step 4: Turn it on high briefly to ensure everything’s ground up.
Easy!
Put it in a bag and freeze it so you have some whenever. My double batch (2 loaves of bread, but one batch of the above recipe) made about 5 cups of bread crumbs. In addition to meatballs, I also use them in stuffed mushrooms, one of my favorite holiday (or anytime) dishes!
How to Make Bread Crumbs
Ingredients
- 1 loaf of bread sliced thinly or cut into chunks
- A blender like Vitamix or food processor
Instructions
- Cut your bread into chunks and set it somewhere to dry out. It should take 1 - 2 days. You can slice it, but mine was pretty much rock-hard, so I tore it like this:
- Once they're dry, add some to the blender or food processor, filling no more than half full:
- Turn it on low at first, slowly turning it up as the pieces turn into smaller crumbs:
- Turn it on high briefly to ensure everything's ground up.
I'm such a nerd……I love making breadcrumbs. It's fun. 🙂
I was actually planning on doing this this weekend after a failed loaf of sourdough bread… Thank goodness I know not to throw it out instead! And I'm excited to make meatballs with the bread crumbs, because I just haven't been making meatballs because I didn't have any traditionally prepared bread crumbs, and I LOVE the taste of bread crumbs in meatballs. So next week I'll make meatballs to put in my homemade sourdough pita bread. Yum.
My husband has celiac disease, so breadcrumbs are not an option. I always use organic gluten free oats in place of bread crums. depending on my mood, i’ll whiz them in the food processor to change the consistency but, i’ve actually used them for years (even before celiacs) to add nutrition to things like meatballs… nobody ever knew.
I have gotten sprouted hot dog buns before that, unfortunately, no one in my family cared for (I guess they are too hard!), so instead of trashing them I did this very thing: I put them in the food processor and turned them into breadcrumbs. It was a great way to use up an otherwise nutritionally-fine but undesirable product. Woohoo!