**This post has been entered in Pennywise Platters at The Nourishing Gourmet!**
My family really enjoys meatballs and meatloaf. While I’ve been making them with shredded veggies and/or coconut flour in place of bread crumbs, sometimes I just crave that good old-fashioned taste that comes along with using those bread crumbs.
But of course, the store bread crumbs, at best are not soaked. At worst, they contain HFCS and a lot of other junk. Needless to say, I don’t buy them.
For this, you can make your own bread (and it doesn’t matter if you are terrible at making bread — I used a batch that happened not to turn out when I made these), or you can purchase store-bought sprouted bread or real sourdough to use. It’s up to you. I’ve adapted my favorite whole wheat bread for soaking, and I used that.
(As to soaking it, I mixed the water and about 4 c. of flour together with the juice of 1 lemon and let it sit overnight. After that, I followed the directions for the butter, milk, honey, and salt; proofed the yeast and poured it over the dough. Then I worked it in, adding about 1 c. additional sprouted flour. This worked out great. I tried a second way of doing it that was a failure, though…and that led to the most recent batch of bread crumbs.)
Anyway, it’s simple! You will need:
- 1 loaf of bread, sliced thinly or cut into chunks
- A blender (like Vitamix) or food processor
Cut your bread into chunks and set it somewhere to dry out. It should take 1 – 2 days. You can slice it, but mine was pretty much rock hard, so I tore it like this:
Once they’re dry, add some to the blender or food processor, filling no more than half full:
Turn it on low at first, slowly turning it up as the pieces turn into smaller crumbs:
Turn it on high briefly to make sure everything’s ground up. When you’re done, it should look like this:
Easy!
Now, put it in a bag and freeze it so you have some whenever. My double batch (2 loaves of bread, but one batch of the above recipe) made about 5 cups of bread crumbs. In addition to meatballs, I also use them in stuffed mushrooms, one of my favorite holiday (or anytime) dishes!
What are your favorite uses for bread crumbs? Have you ever made your own?
I'm such a nerd……I love making breadcrumbs. It's fun.
I was actually planning on doing this this weekend after a failed loaf of sourdough bread… Thank goodness I know not to throw it out instead! And I'm excited to make meatballs with the bread crumbs, because I just haven't been making meatballs because I didn't have any traditionally prepared bread crumbs, and I LOVE the taste of bread crumbs in meatballs. So next week I'll make meatballs to put in my homemade sourdough pita bread. Yum.