I've been doing it all wrong!

During the week I cleaned out (organised) our freezer. We have a large stand alone freezer in the garage that I could not live without. Down in it's depths I found the remains (leftover bones) of 7 chicken roast dinners and 4 lamb roasts. So needless to say, I have been making pots and pots of stock this week.

I also found a million little bags of bread ends. Since I left home at 17, I have been keeping the stale ends of good bread and putting it into the freezer to be made into breadcrumbs. However about a month ago I was watching the a River Cottage DVD and realised that I've been doing it all wrong.

Thanks Hugh for the great tip: dry out the bread in the oven before blitzing them in the food processor!

Such a simple thing.

I used to defrost the bread, process it into breadcrumbs, then return the breadcrumbs to the freezer, ready to use. Hugh's way, means that there is no moisture left in the bread, so they can be stored in an airtight container in the pantry instead and not take up precious freezer space. Brilliant.

You never do stop learning.





Homemade Breadcrumbs

• leftover pieces of stale bread (defrosted if necessary and broken up)

Preheat oven to 100 degrees. Put the broken up pieces of bread on to a flat baking tray and bake for 2 hours. Leave the bread to cool completely before processing in a food processor to fine breadcrumbs. Store in an airtight container.