Herbed Croutons

Croutons are a staple recipe that everyone should be able to make. It's a great way to get rid of almost any type of bread that you're sitting on. This is a very basic recipe that I use to garnish soups, finished salads, or basically add texture to dishes when appropriate. I've posted a recipe for pancetta parmesan croutons in the past, but I realized that I don't have a basic recipe on my site.

As with most of my recipes, feel free and change up the ingredients to what you like. I used citrusy-garlic, herbs de Provence, and chives to season these, with the addition of salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil and butter. When I make these in restaurants, I normally use a blend of herbs, garlic salt/powder, pepper, and oil (especially in my current job as we try to keep dietary guidelines simplified for general consumption) but the method of making these are the same.

Take some bread, day old works very well, cube it up, heat your fat and seasonings to bloom a touch, then coat your croutons. You can cook them at a higher temperature if you desire, but the chance of burning is much greater so I prefer to drop the oven to around 250, and toss the croutons every 10 minutes or so until they are cooked and crunchy almost all the way through. One thing to remember is the carry over cooking will continue to toast the croutons, so if you pull them out completely crispy, they will be very crunchy at the end.

Enjoy.

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Ingredients

• bread, stale ideally, diced 1 loaf

• oil, extra virgin 3 T

• butter 2 oz

• salt 1 T (to taste)

• pepper 2 tsp (to taste)

• chives, dried* 2 tsp

• herbs de Provence* 2 tsp

• citrusy garlic* 2 tsp

*Feel free to change up the flavors you are using. Oregano, Italian blend, basic, garlic powder, onion powder are a very neutral common base for croutons.

Method of Procedure

1. Heat your oven to 225-250 degrees.

2. Cube up your bread into whatever sized croutons you desire. I generally go for 1-2" cubes.

3. Melt you butter with your oil and seasonings.

4. In a bowl toss your croutons with half the mixture. Add more as needed but make sure you don't over saturate your bread. The cubes should be coated lightly, but not drowning in the mixture.

5. Place your seasoned croutons on a sheet tray and bake for 15 minutes. Stir, repeat until crispy. Remember that carry over cooking will continue the process so pull them when crunchy, but not hard.