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Croutons
Cut one-third inch slices of stale buttered bread, from which crusts have been removed, into one-half inch cubes, brown in oven.
A two-line method that assumes you already know the oven is on and roughly how hot. The details worth pinning down are the bread, the heat and the timing.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given; the recipe assumes a cook who can judge the oven. A moderate oven, around 375F, works: hot enough to dry and colour the cubes in 10-15 minutes, not so hot that the butter scorches before the centres dry out.
- Butter first, then cutThe recipe butters the slice before cubing, so the buttered face or faces are coated and the cut sides left bare. Softened butter spreads on stale bread without tearing it.
- Stale bread mattersFresh bread compresses under the knife and steams in the oven. Day-old or two-day-old bread cuts to clean cubes and dries rather than toasts. If your bread is fresh, leave the slices uncovered for a few hours first.
- Stir onceSpread in a single layer and turn the cubes halfway through, or the undersides brown while the tops stay pale. They are done when they are coloured through and rattle on the pan.
- YieldFour slices of sandwich bread, crusts removed, gives roughly two cups of half-inch cubes.
- KeepingCool completely before storing or the trapped steam softens them. Airtight at room temperature they hold about a week; the butter means they will eventually go rancid rather than merely stale.
Croutons are French only in name -- croûton is a diminutive of croûte, crust -- but the practice of salvaging stale bread by drying it in the falling heat of an oven is older and more general than any national cuisine. The recipe's brevity is itself period evidence: it specifies the thickness of the slice and the size of the cube, on the understanding that no cook needed telling how to brown bread.