As a semi-single girl, I end up either eating the same foods all week or throwing away lots of uneaten food. Lately, I've been trying to figure out ways to repurpose ingredients for different dishes. I always have stale sandwich bread leftover because there's just no way to eat a whole loaf of bread in a week by myself. I looked around online, and tried a couple of crouton recipes and ultimately came up with a great combination of all of them. Here's what I figured out.

Some recipes called for oil instead of butter, but I found that butter tastes makes the croutons much less greasy. It also soaks into the bread better and gives it a good flavor. Fresh garlic is a must, use more if you like really garlicky croutons for Ceasar salads. Some recipes called for garlic salt, but it makes the croutons powdery like the store-bought ones. But on the flip side, don't use fresh oregano. It will just blacken and not stick to the bread. The other key is to keep your oven super low. You don't want to toast the croutons, or it will just taste like crispy stale bread. You want them to cook very slowly at a very low temperature so they get crisp all the way through and browned all over.

This recipe is enough for about half a loaf of bread, which is usually what I have laying around. If you don't have a lot of bread leftovers, put stale bread in the freezer and stock up until you have enough to warrant some serious crouton-ing.


1/4 stick of butter, melted.
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced or finely chopped
1 T dried oregano (or any other DRIED herbs you have on hand...thyme? rosemary maybe?)
Salt/Black Pepper to taste

1. Cut stale bread into cubes.
2. Pulse ingredients together in food processor or mini chopper until garlic is very small. (If you don't have either of these, just mince your garlic really small and stir the mixture thoroughly by hand before tossing with bread.)
3. Toss with bread. Spread croutons over a cookie sheet covered with tin foil and bake at 200-250(depending on how hot your oven gets) degrees for about an hour or until browned all over. Flip the croutons about halfway through.

-Sarah