San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Homemade breadcrumbs add flavor to pastas, vegetables, more
As 2020 continues, unrelenting, I trymy best to find the rare crumb of solace where I can. For me, that often starts in the kitchen.
Likemany, I fell into the world of bread-baking, tending carefully tomy sourdough starter and waxing poetic aboutmy boules to my boyfriend. But with just the two of us, it became hard to finish all the bread we were baking. So I started to make breadcrumbs.
It was a hobby that started out of necessity, as a way to use up stale bread, but quickly turned into an activity I looked forward to for its meditative qualities. Suddenlymy stale loaf has a new life. It’s something crunchier, saltier and worth celebrating a second time.
I addmy breadcrumbs to pasta as a final crunchy topping, to salads in place of croutons and to roasted chicken for a pop of texture. The crumbs pack enough
flavor and crunch to upgrade just about anymeal. A simple dinner of pasta tossed in nothing more than olive oil makes the perfect blank canvas to let the breadcrumbs shine, and having them on hand just makes weeknight cookingmore exciting.
In fact, I’ve slowly started to planmy meals around what I can sprinkle them over.
The recipemakes a large batch, so you can store them in your fridge and use them as-is, or quickly heat them in a dry pan to restore crispness.
Once youmake them, you might never go back to the boxed, seasoned variety again. Take your time, allow yourself to get lost in the process, and breathe some new life into your stale bread.