1,534 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Croutons

Do you use croutons, that typically French trick of toasting small pieces of bread on the side to add to a recipe?

They're just delicious, but you need to know 2 or 3 things about them.

9,993 5/5 (17 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Bread Croutons Recovery Toasted

Last modified on: December 30^th 2020

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Croutons

Don't buy them

Commercial croutons are overpriced compared to what they cost in real life, they're generally made with industrial bread of very mediocre quality, and above all they're made with a lot of more or less dodgy stuff: lots of salt, artificial flavoring, extra fat, etc. Avoid them at all costs. Avoid at all costs.

croutons industriels

A great way to recycle stale bread

There's no need to use fresh bread to make them; on the contrary, they're much easier to make and detail when the bread is a little dry.

How to make them?

It's very simple:

découpe croutons

- Cut one or two slices of slightly stale bread with a saw knife, ideally into 1 cm cubes. Depending on your taste, you can use only the crumb of the bread (whiter), or the crumb + crust (more color and flavor).
- In a frying pan over high heat, heat either a little olive oil or a little butter ( clarified if possible), depending on your taste.
- When it's hot, add the bread cubes all at once, stirring quickly to distribute the fat evenly.

Note that the bread cubes act like sponges, sucking up all the fat, but you mustn't add any more, as it would be sucked up again, and this time it would be too greasy.

croutons

- Brown the croutons, stirring regularly to evenly brown them.
- Season with salt and pepper at the end of cooking

Use in your chosen recipe, croutons transcend salads in particular, where they bring a contrast of crunchiness, and even of hot-cold if incorporated right out of the pan.

Possible variations:

- Rub the bread pieces with a clove of garlic or 1/2 shallot before cooking.
- Instead of salt and pepper, sprinkle cooked croutons with curry powder, paprika, turmeric or other spices of your choice.

Tosum up: It's much better to make your own croutons, as they taste better and cost less.

Lasts posts

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 2025442

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,0835

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,1453

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20256,6525

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,7045

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
June 16^th 202157 K4.8

Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?

Let’s try and answer a question that crops up in cookery and patisserie, even if it verges on the existential: do the egg yolks in a custard recipe really need to be beaten until pale, or not?
February 28^th 201844 K4.3

Small, regular pieces

When we cook, bake or pastry, we often have to cut food into small pieces, often cubes, to incorporate them into a recipe or preparation. How do you get regular pieces fairly quickly?
November 28^th 202011 K4.5

Cream and sauces

Have you ever wondered why making beautiful tasty sauces is so easy when you use cream? .
October 15^th 201223 K4.4

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201378 K4.0