We all hate it when our food goes bad. It's a waste of money and resources. But TikTok user Joe @joesgarden just posted a simple hack that shows you how to turn stale bread into Italian breadcrumbs.
"It's fantastic to use on your home baking for that extra crunch and flavor!" Joe wrote in the caption.
@joesgarden Today we are using stale bread to make a delicious Italian style breadcrumb seasoning, it's fantastic to use on your home baking for that extra crunch and flavour! 😊🌱🥖 #diy #zerowaste #healthy #recipe #bread #seasoning #learnontiktok ♬ Sunroof - Nicky Youre & dazy
The scoop
The video starts with a hunk of rock-hard stale bread. Using a good bread knife, Joe cuts it into more sizable chunks and chucks it into his blender. Once the bread is processed into a powder, he seasons it with salt, pepper, and dried Italian herbs.
From there, he spreads the crumbs into an even layer on a baking sheet and pops it in the oven at a low temperature until all the moisture is gone.
"You can use these fantastic Italian bread crumbs to coat your potatoes, chicken, or any home-baked goods for that fantastic flavor and crunch," Joe says in the video.
How it's helping
No one likes seeing their hard-earned cash end up in the trash can. And that's exactly what happens when we have to throw away food that's gone bad. Besides removing breadcrumbs from your grocery list, this hack helps cut down on food waste — which is a pretty big problem, especially for bread.
Bread is the most wasted food group in the U.S., with about 240 million slices making it into the trash each year. But it's just a small part of a much larger problem.
Each year, around one-third of all food in the U.S. gets thrown away — that's about 119 billion pounds. All that food ends up in landfills, where it releases carbon, contributing to the warming of our planet.
Repurposing your stale bread into breadcrumbs is a pretty easy and convenient way to get started in making your kitchen more sustainable than ever.
What everyone's saying
TikTokers weren't just getting behind this hack, they were also offering up their own tricks for repurposing stale bread.
"I use my stale bread to make bread pudding," one user wrote.
"If you want to keep the loaf, you can run water over it then place in the oven for 10 minutes and boom, fresh as the day you got it," another commented.
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