Here is a simple recipe for delicious homemade croutons!
I’m a sucker for yummy restaurant croutons. They’re always a thousand times better than those store-bought things. And making croutons at home is so incredibly easy that, if you’re looking for a place to cut back on all the store-bought packaging, this is a great one.
I know making bread is another one of those very basic things that companies somehow convinced the public we don’t know how to do. But…it feels like a bit of a shame sometimes to take a beautiful fresh homemade loaf and turn it into croutons. Your choice. I like to pick up day-old loaves (50c for a 12 foot loaf at Jimmy John’s). I bring my own bag, and I figure it’s a bit of reusing to do something with the day-olds that are already sitting out at bakeries or sandwich shops.
The “hardest” part of the recipe, if you can call it that, is just cubing the bread and trying not to eat it all as I go. I find that my batches usually need to cook longer than 10 minutes. And then, at some point, I turn the oven off and let the tray sit a little longer to crisp everything up a bit. But keep an eye, since, even with the oven off, these things can start browning pretty quickly.
I don’t know how long these keep–never really comes to that. But, I know I’ve frozen them in the past as a way to always have some on hand.