Do you eat leftover bread, and how? In the olden days, my mother would apply butter and a little cheese before toasting the leftover bread from breakfast that would serve as a mid-afternoon snack. I grew up in that style. But I have learned a better way of cooking the leftover bread in a more palatable way. Bread pizza - instead of butter, tomato paste is applied with bits of cheese and meat (whatever is there, ham or sausage) not to forget the bell pepper or white onion, those 2 ingredients that provides the taste of real pizza. Toasting is easy and eating is easier... with tabasco sauce.
We don't have leftover bread anymore, because we freeze the bread and take out an amount for the day When I first heard of freezing bread, I couldn't believe it would be good, thought it would make the bread hard, but lo and behold its lovely and as soft as when it went into the freezer - YAY !
I try to remember to freeze any bread that won't be used within a reasonable amount of time. When I don't do that, I usually just break it up on crumbs for something like meatloaf or use it for French Toast. If it gets even too old for that, I put it out for the birds and squirrels. And rabbits. And chipmunks. And deer... my ever-present backyard menagerie.
I usually keep one loaf in the fridge, and when I can, another in the freezer. Back home, we would just keep the bread in a basket on top of the refrigerator, and there was a wide variety of it to choose from, but down here, there's too much humidity, and so it goes into the fridge. I don't often have leftover bread these days, but what I've done in the past was to make french toast with it, and usually when I make french toast (or pancakes or waffles), I make a huge batch and freeze the extra, then take it out a few pieces at a time and use it that way. Nowadays, if I have any extra, it's usually just a piece or two, and I either mix that in with the food I give to the stray cats, or put it out for the birds.
I never have left over bread. I leave the loaf wrapped and on the kitchen counter, using what I need. If any of it gets moldy, I save it and make my own penicillin.
We buy just enough hot bread from a neighbor with a small bakery. If there are some left after breakfast, those left at home will keep them for snacks in the morning or early noon.
I don't usually buy too much bread and even that is the flaxseed/chia seed healthier bread. I buy it once a month and put it in the fridge, sometimes freezer depending on how much I'm eating because sometimes I never eat bread.
You remind me of my husband who would keep leftover bread in the vegetable crisper of the refrigerator in the olden times. When no one would make a bread pizza or no one would bother to touch it, the bread would be okay for 2 weeks, that's according to my husband. And after that period, he would turn the bread into crumbs and bake it into pudding. He makes nice pudding with condensed milk, sugar and fillings like raisins and sometimes seedless grapes. However, in the recent years, it seemed that he had gone lazy in baking pudding because he said no one was eating it except himself.
Yeah french bread with left over bread. We love it soft and creamy so we add a bit of Stevia, milk and eggs for the soaking of the old bread and fry it up in butter. Add sugar free syrup when done to french toast and yum! If you got fruit or cheese it's good with french toast too!
Sometimes my wife makes bread, otherwise we buy half-loaves. If it goes bad, I compost it or feed it to the birds.
I remember an aunt in the province who buys a lot of morning bread - we call it pandesal, it's like a bagel but smaller in size. For me, I am satisfied with 2 pieces and for heavy eaters maybe 3 or 4 pieces would be enough for breakfast. When I was on vacation in the province, I noticed the big brown bag of pandesal on the breakfast table. There were only 5 people in the house including me so let's say each would have 3 pieces then that 25 pieces is more than enough. That's when I learned that he feeds the excess bread to the birds that visit their backyard, the reason why there are lots of birds there especially in the morning. Now that we live in this suburban town, there are also a variety of birds that visit our backyard. However, I cannot feed them bread because they are not tame. At the sight of a human, they would instantly fly away.
Leftover bread that has become rather hard, is best crumbled up into the dough used to make Czech or Polish dumplings! The texture is improved by little pockets of darker, softer material due to the brown crust. Mmmmm.........wonderful when cut up into bite-sized pieces, then liberally covered with fresh cut-up fruit, over topped with dry cottage cheese, with melted butter spread lightly over that! We called 'em "fruit dumplings"! Frank