How to make hard bread soft?
After a few hours in contact with air, the bread becomes dry and hard, which is why it is recommended to wrap it in a tea towel or store it in a bread bag.
But that the bread is dry does not mean that nothing can be done with it.
It is possible to give it a second life.
Recovering a hard baguette will consist of re-wetting it.
There are various techniques for this.
To discover
Recipes, tips, chef's secrets... Download the Le Figaro Cuisine app
The first is to
put the bread in the oven
at 180 degrees, 5 to 10 minutes, after moistening it.
However, be careful not to soak it with water, moistening it means passing it just a few seconds under a stream of water.
The heat allows the humidity to diffuse throughout the bread and to restore a crispy bread at the level of the crust and soft at the heart.
Another alternative, much faster and more practical: wrap the bread in damp paper towel and
put it in the microwave for
10 seconds and renew if the crispness is not enough.
Read alsoTrue or false?
Five misconceptions about bread
What to do with dry, hard bread?
Anyone who does not want to waste a food product can use dry bread, as is or processed, in delicious recipes.
First of all, you can make delicious homemade garlic croutons with dry bread.
To do this, simply rub the dry bread well with a clove of garlic, then drizzle the bread with a drizzle of olive oil.
Then, all that remains is to cut the bread into small squares and brown them in the oven for about fifteen minutes at 180 degrees.
Better, it is possible to keep these croutons for a week in a hermetically sealed box.
Croutons are excellent in a soup or to garnish Caesar salad type salads.
Another possibility: in autumn and winter, Savoyard fondues are a dish of choice and there is nothing like stale bread rubbed with garlic and dipped in melted cheese.
The ideal is to take a dense bread with a thick crust (preferably a traditional or country bread, rather than a baguette).
The latter indeed holds better when it is immersed in the fondue pot.
For dessert this time, there is this deliciously regressive recipe, well known to grandmothers: French toast.
The dry bread is then not lost but cut into relatively thick slices, before being dipped in a mixture made up of 2 eggs, 50 cl of milk and a few drops of vanilla.
It must be well impregnated with the mixture without however being soggy, otherwise it will crumble.
Then all that remains is to brown the bread in a pan in melted butter after having sprinkled it with brown sugar so that it caramelizes on the surface.
Variation: the French toast recipe with sandwich bread.
In video, how to choose the right ingredients for homemade bread?
How to recycle and store dry, hard bread?
To avoid waste, it is quite possible to recycle your dry bread.
The latter is indeed ideal for making homemade breadcrumbs.
To do this, cut the dry bread into cubes and then pass them through the blender for the time required to obtain the desired texture.
This breadcrumb will then be used for breaded fish or meat recipes, for gratins and for any dish to which you want to add a crunchy note.
This basic recipe can give rise to variants, to flavor its breadcrumbs.
Thus, it is possible to make a cheese breadcrumb by adding grated pecorino, parmesan and Gruyère cheese to the breadcrumbs.
It is also delicious to flavor it with mint and lemon by adding grated lemon zest, chopped mint, salt and black pepper.
Finally, cinnamon-flavored breadcrumbs are an original alternative for sweet dishes, made with breadcrumbs, sugar, cinnamon and chopped roasted hazelnuts.
