If you find that you have bread that is going stale, or you’re not a fan of pizza crust, some quick action can turn that potential waste into future food.
The process is super straight-forward, and easy. Just take the bread or pizza crust, tear it up into small pieces, place them on a sheet tray and set them out somewhere where they will get lots of air flow and little moisture. Nature does the rest. After a couple of days sitting out, the moisture in the bread should have evaporated from the bread. Once the moisture is gone, the bread becomes to mold and bacteria what the Sahara Desert is to humans: dry and inhospitable. It’s essentially shelf-stable at this stage and can sit out without spoiling–as long as it stays dry.
You can turn the chunks into crumbs by tossing them into a food processor or spice/coffee grinder. I find that the food processor is less effective than the coffee grinder, but use what you’ve got. If you have a sieve or a strainer, it can help you to sort out the crumbs as you grind them, so you can put the big chunks back in for more grinding.
The more flavorful the bread, the more flavorful the bread crumbs. Pizza crust is especially good. As is sourdough bread. White bread is the least flavorful–but we already knew that, didn’t we?
Use these bread crumbs to bread food for frying, or use them in meatballs and meatloaf as binder/filler.