Did you know you can make your own homemade bread crumbs?
It’s really easy.
Why should you make your own bread crumbs?
- Buying them is expensive.
- A good way to use old or stale bread.
- Save money AND waste. 🙂
After a church function the leftover bread was send home with the members. But since the bread had sat out a lot, it was a little hard and stale. Not to mention, we don’t like white bread.
What you will need, to make one quart of homemade bread crumbs.
- 6 regular slices of bread.
- Food processor.
- Quart jar, or similar sized container, to store your homemade bread crumbs in.
Tear your bread into medium sized pieces and put them in your chopper. I did this three pieces at a time. Depending on the size of your food processor you may want to do more or less than that.
Three pieces fill my chopper about 2/3 full. Run your chopper on medium to high speed for about 20 seconds. Your crumbs should be coarse with no large pieces.
Once you have your bread crumbs, pour them into your jar or storage container. There you go!
How long will your homemade bread crumbs last?
These are still fresh bread crumbs, meaning they have not been completely dried or toasted. I wouldn’t recommend putting fresh homemade bread crumbs on the shelf. Mine go into the freezer, although I am sure the fridge would be fine for a couple weeks. Last jar of bread crumbs I pulled out of the freezer still smelled great, but I use a tight sealing jar so that will make a big difference. My bread crumbs last at least 3-4 months.
Correction, they stay good 3-4 months. I use a lot of bread crumbs so they don’t usually last real long. 🙂
If you insist on having seasoned bread crumbs add:
- Tablespoon of Italian Seasoning + teaspoon of granulated garlic, for Italian Breadcrumbs
- Tablespoon of Mrs Dash seasoning salt for Seasoned Breadcrumbs.
- 1 Tablespoon of lemon – pepper, for Breadcrumbs with a zip.
It’s pretty easy to make homemade bread crumbs, so next time you have old stale bread, don’t throw it out. Make your own breadcrumbs!
Good tip! I started making my own breadcrumbs recently and freeze them also. Why I started making them was because I had made special tea sandwiches for a tea party and had all this extra bread left (from the cut out shapes) that I could NOT throw out. I was like, well I guess I will freeze them for meatloaf or something. I was wondering about seasoned ones, so thanks for the instructions. Seasoned ones will go well on my baked mac and cheese. 😀
Wow! so easy and simple. 🙂
I know, who-da thunk it? 😉
Thanks for sharing! Good to know they’re easy enough to make homemade. 🙂
I do something similar ofter, no trowing away good bread! 🙂
I also suggest mixing some finely grated parmesan in them if used for chicken or veggies…yum yum.
Ooooo that’s a a good idea! I love cheese. 🙂
It’s amazing the volume of crumbs you get per slice of bread! I usually toast the bread before crumbing it for better flavor and possibly longer shelf life–although I keep mine in the freezer, too.
Another great use for extra bread is a bread pudding, either the dessert type or Cheesy Vegetable Bread Pudding.
I just tried a bread pudding recipe and I didn’t like it much, but found another one to try. And toast is a good idea!
Panko has nothing on you! We love bread crumbs and now that I’m thinking about it we could use whole wheat bread and make HEALTHY bread crumbs!
That’s good too 🙂 I really don’t notice a difference in what kind of bread I use for the crumbs, they both work well.
I need to do this TODAY. Somehow I have several opened loaves of bread on top of my fridge and they are getting stale. I was going to just give them to the chickens, but this would be even better. Thanks for the idea!~
Perfect timing right? 😉
That’s so cool! I never thought about it before, but it makes total sense that you could do that. 🙂 Thanks for sharing at The Fun In Functional!
You can also tear the bread into small chunks and air dry them in a pie pan in the cupboard. Once dried out, they are very easy to turn into bread crumbs.
Great tip, Kendra! Thanks for sharing on Tiny Tip Tuesday! I’m sharing on FB 🙂