A New Life for Stale Bread—For Mush Lovers and Haters Alike

The best thing since sliced bread? Stale bread.

From stale bread comes bread puddings and stratas, croutons and breadcrumbs, soups and sauces, and more. Why, stale bread is so useful, sometimes we even find ourselves needing to stale it on purpose.

When stale bread shows up in soups, often times they are built around the stale bread from the start (I’m looking at you sopa de ajo and pancotto), but that's not the case with this recipe.

It begins with minestra, a soup that easily straddles winter and spring with its mix of comforting ingredients (cabbage, cannellini beans) and vibrant flavors (fennel, dandelion greens, fennel seeds). (The author, Christina @ Christina’s Cucina is a World Porridge Champion, so if anyone knows comfort food, it must be her.)

And then it provides a second meal: The leftover minestra becomes a hearty, filling dish with the addition of stale, crusty Italian bread and generous drizzles of olive oil (not unlike the traditional preparation of ribollita).

The dish is delicious as written, but rather than heat the minestra, bread, and olive oil all at the same time, I also tried starting with just the bread and the oil before adding any soup.

This created croutons that, when heated up with the soup, provided an pleasantly oil-soaked, crispy contrast to the rest of the soup—perfect for those who might be skeptical of mushy foods. Plus, fried bread is never a bad thing.

Reheated Minestra with Olive Oil and Stale Bread

View Recipe

Ingredients

For the minestra:

6	tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

6	tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

For the reheated minestra with olive oil and stale bread:

1 1/2

cups stale, crusty Italian bread, torn into bite-size pieces (measurement isn't important, just add more or less bread to your liking)

1 1/2

cups stale, crusty Italian bread, torn into bite-size pieces (measurement isn't important, just add more or less bread to your liking)

Know of a great recipe in the Food52 archives that uses an overlooked kitchen scrap (anything from commonly discarded produce parts to stale bread to bones and more)? Tell me about it in the comments: I want to know how you're turning what would otherwise be trash into a dish to treasure!