Feel the Love

Here are my little heart croutons I made. I felt a bit like Lady's Home J., Julia, Sandra or Martha -esque making these croutons from day old stale bread. Home cooks from years gone by have made croutons for salads, soups (like French onion soup), stuffing, bread pudding, bread crumbs, but for me, this is the 1st time I have ever made croutons.

I don't keep traditional American sliced bread in the house normally because I was not really raised on an American bread tradition, and I am not a grocery store sliced bread fan. Since I don't normally have bread in the house, I don't really have opportunity to play with stale sliced bread. When we do have bread in the house, it is usually tortillas, injera, naan, brick oven flat bread, or small quantity in a "bread basket" from Provence Bakery. The bread of Provence Bakery is made to be eaten during the day it is purchased, or else it gets stale and hard the next day because there are no preservatives or stabilizers in it.


The day before I made these croutons, we bought a bread basket from Provence Bakery which includes 6 slices of the daily bread, and only used 2 slices. There were 4 slices left, 2 white and 2 whole grain. The next day, the 4 slices were stale, and it was going to be so wasteful to dump the bread in the trash. That is when I remembered I got cutest mini-cookie cutters from Pampered Chef. The cutters are about 1 inch in diameter (bite sized cutters, not large cookie cutters) and includes a heart, star, apple, maple leaf, pumpkin, and others. I thought to myself that making heart shaped croutons would be so awesome! I get to not waste food by using the 4 slices of stale bread, and I get to make the cutest croutons that I have ever seen!

I took the heart shaped cutter and started cutting little hearts into the 4 slices of stale bread to make the croutons. I melted a little butter in some olive oil in a shallow pan. I dipped the bread hearts in the buttery oil to lightly coat both sides of the bread hearts. I put the bread hearts on flat baking pan and baked the hearts for a few minutes, than I turned them over and baked again for a few minutes to desiccate them to make them shelf stable.

Yup, I think these croutons are cute! They were fun to eat to.