1,571 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.

11 K 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

The strange foam of potatoes in milk

As you may have already noticed, when you cook potatoes in milk, especially in small pieces (slices or cubes) for a gratin for example, a surprisingly abundant white foam forms on the surface. Where does it come from?
April 26^th 2026677

A little leftover butter

Very often when you're making a cake, your recipe will tell you to melt some butter and mix it into the batter - a classic for cookies, cakes, moelleux and the like. And every time you do this, you'll have to butter the baking tin to prevent the dough from sticking during baking. Naturally,...
April 16^th 20268135

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20261,5495

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20261,3945

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20253,4155

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Baking cakes

Where we see that to put a cake in the oven, once the dough is finished and in its mould, there is no hurry and that the cold is your friend.
June 28^th 201946 K4.1

Stand mixer tools

Whether we call it a stand mixer, food processor, or simply refer to it by brand (Kenwood, KitchenAid, etc.), this machine is a valuable tool for amateur cooks, bakers or pastry chefs like ourselves. All these machines come supplied with 3 different tools. Let’s take a look at their names and...
November 2^nd 201939 K4.5

Balancing flavours

In the kitchen, we sometimes use ingredients that can be a little overwhelming in taste. Grilled lardons, for example, are very good, they give a great taste to a lot of recipes where they are added, but you have to be objective, they're still pretty fatty!
November 7^th 20209,6875

Burgers and cheeses

A quick look at burgers(article from 2 weeks ago), and in particular the cheese in burgers, many of you have asked me about this, and how to get cheese to melt in your burgers.
April 24^th 202110 K4.8

Divide and weigh dough into regular pieces

When you prepare dough for cupcakes in a pastry shop or bakery, at some point you're going to have to divide it, i.e. cut it into small pieces, which should all have the same weight. Sounds simple enough, but is it really that simple?
May 30^th 202313 K5