Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Savory Seasoned Bread Crumbs

My new Christmas present, which I told my husband NOT to buy for me...

The first thing I did was think of a name for her (because I name everything). It took a few days. I finally decided on Cleo. Once she was named I broke her out of the box, cleaned off the packing dust, and put her to good use. The first thing we made together was breadcrumbs.

We chopped up 2 loaves of day-old French bread and spread each loafworth out on a large pizza pan.

Next I drizzled a good quality olive oil (I like Colavita) over the crumbs and rolled them gently with a spatula to distribute the olive oil.

Next I sprinkled on sea salt, dessicated garlic, and my own special Italian herb blend (oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, sage, savory, and sorrel). I roll the crumbs lightly with my spatula again to coat the crumbs with oil and seasoning.

I warm the oven to 275* and put in one pan at a time. I toast the crumbs for 10 minutes, gently turn, and then toast an additional 10 minutes.

I let the crumbs cool completely and then scoop 2 c. into each Ziploc freezer bag, label, and toss in the freezer for storage.

These are amazing and you will never buy breadcrumbs in the store that will equal homemade. I use these in every recipe that calls for breadcrumbs and occasionally make larger crumbs with this recipe for croutons, which I use fresh and never store. If you make croutons and find that you can't use them all right away, crunch them up for breadcrumbs.

You don't have to have a Cuisinart, or any food processor at all. You could just tear up the bread by hand.



*I reassigned my old 3-cup capacity Cuisinart with the broken lid to compost duty, keeping it out of a landfill and speeding up my composting too.*

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