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Bread Dust
Two or three times weekly spread leftover scraps upon a tin plate or baking pan and dry perfectly in moderate oven. Throw out soft or soggy bits and keep the brown pieces separate from the white in a separate jar. While the dried bits are still warm, crush to powder on board with rolling-pin. Do this thoroughly, leaving no gritty particles. Keep in closed jar in dry place. Invaluable for breading croquettes, fried fish, chops, etc. Roll the article to be breaded first in a beaten egg, then in bread dust to which have been added a little salt and pepper.
A thrift procedure rather than a dish, and still the best breadcrumb you can have in the cupboard. Two details in the original do the real work: the crumbs must be dried through, not toasted, and they must be crushed while warm.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 325-350F. The aim is to drive out moisture without colouring the bread, so a lower oven with the door cracked is closer to the intent than a fast one. The pieces are ready when they snap rather than bend.
- Crush while warmWarm dry bread shatters; cooled bread has picked up humidity and turns leathery under the pin. This is the hinge of the whole method, and the reason the recipe insists on it.
- Brown and white kept apartCrust crumbs colour fast and go dark before the interior of a croquette is hot. Crumb from the soft interior fries a pale even gold, which is what you want on fish and veal; keep the crust crumb for gratins and stuffings where deeper colour is welcome.
- Throw out the soggy bitsNot fussiness. Bread that is still damp at the centre when jarred is what spoils a batch of crumbs, and any butter or spread on the scraps will go rancid within weeks.
- Food processorA processor does in ten seconds what the rolling-pin does in five minutes, but it leaves a mixed grade. Sieve the result and re-grind the coarse fraction if you want the fine, sandy "dust" the recipe describes.
- StorageA sealed jar in a dry cupboard holds several months if the drying was thorough. The freezer is more forgiving and costs nothing in quality.
- Breading in practiceSeason the crumb as directed, but dust the food with flour before the egg. Bare wet meat or fish sheds egg, and the coating slides off in the pan. Rest breaded items ten minutes before frying so the crust sets.
- YieldRoughly a pound of scrap bread gives something in the region of two to three cups of dry crumb once the moisture is driven off, which will keep a small household in croquettes and chops for some while.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg and distributed largely to promote its flour, which meant its readers were assumed to be baking bread at home several times a week. That assumption is what makes this entry necessary: a household producing its own loaves produces heels, ends and stale slices continuously, and "two or three times weekly" was simply the rhythm at which the scrap crock filled up. In a kitchen of this kind, breading a chop meant having made the crumb yourself. The instruction to separate brown from white reflects the practical knowledge that crust crumb scorches; it is the kind of small detail that these company cookbooks, compiled from submissions sent in by users of the flour, preserved better than more literary volumes did.