Everything I buy a loaf of sliced bread and get through it, I inevitably get to the last two slices, both of which are mostly crust that I usually end up throwing away. I know it’s wasteful, but I can almost never convince myself to eat them unless I’m actually out of bread. Luckily I can compost them, but I’d still like to deal with them another way.
Do you have any uses for these starchy bugbears? What are your solutions? Any recipes?
Croutons. Always croutons.
I usually keep some floating around in case I need crumbs. Ultimately I usually end up throwing them away or throwing them out for the monkeys.
Bread crumbs. Bird food. Croutons. Stuffing, in theory (you’d need to freeze a bunch of bread ends).
I just eat them, they are fine
I just eat em. Am I being annoying? It’s bread! If it’s getting a little stale toast 'em.
If I get near the end of the loaf I’ll use them one at a time in sandwiches.
Toast ‘em, cheese ‘em, eat ‘em in a soup.
Usually I toss them, not because of taste but because they’re so thin as to be useless. If I happen to time it right I’ll use them in lieu of bread crumbs in meatballs or meatloaf.
I like the crusty ends, so I just toast them and make a sandwich. A thing I did a lot in University was to slice some tomatoes, put some cheap cheese on top, and stick the whole thing in the terrible toaster oven I shared with my roomates. Instant budget pizza.
They’re a perfect vessel for holding a ton of baked beans.
We always kept a bag of them to feed the ducks at the local park.
I tend to just eat them, but I do have an odd sensory issue with them - if I make a sandwich or something, I use the ‘crust’ side of the slice as the interior side so that I am touching normal bread while eating it.
I’ve heard of chefs doing something similar with their toasted sandwiches: they only toast one side and put the toasted side on the inside so you still get the toast crunch but you also don’t sandpaper the roof of your mouth.
I think the bread ends do well with relatively plain peanut butter sandwiches. The peanut butter helps to turn everything into a uniform chew toy once you bite into it, lessening the sensory impact of the crusty ends.
i havent made it myself, but japanese rusk seems like a nice snack. its basically the sweet version of croutons.
They’re the best bit of the loaf, so I usually just eat 'em.
The “end of a loaf” had me picturing the last few inches of a whole uncut loaf, not the end slices of a sliced loaf, and it dredged up an old conversation from my student days.
When I was an exchange student in Tokyo I had both very little money and limited access to a supermarket (there was a 24h convenience store nearby but it didn’t sell many “ingredients”). Hungry and with a nearly empty cupboard, I asked a few peers what they suggested making with what little I had. An American suggested hollowing out the remaining chunk of a loaf of bread, breaking an egg into it, microwaving it (!), and, I quote, “Bam! It’s a pie.”
I think I probably ate ramen.
Anyway, yeah, I’m on team “eat the crusty slices”.
