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Homemade Bread Crumbs

My do-it-yourself instincts naturally lead me to making my own bread crumbs. I started this practice while I still bought bread at the grocery store which I didn’t want to waste. Now that I make my own bread, most of which is whole wheat, I generally use the full-automatic mode of the bread maker to make a loaf of white. Whole wheat doesn’t toast very well and is hard to control during drying.

I slowly figured out that drying is the key to texture of the bread crumbs. If the bread is even a little moist, it won’t break down fully. You can dry the bread to the edge of toasting, or you can toast it a little to add a carmelized flavor. Here are some crumbs that were made from bread that hadn’t yet started to toast. I sliced the loaf into thin slices, then popped it into the oven and checked it every few minutes. Now I am set for a couple of months in the bread crumb department.

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