Croutons
Slices stale bread, cut about 1/2 inch thick, cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Bake until golden brown; when cold put into glass jars. Use with soups.
A bare-bones instruction that assumes you already know how a bread oven behaves. The only things missing are a temperature and a sense of how dry "golden brown" needs to be.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given; the original assumes the cook knows her own oven. A moderate oven, 350F, for 10 to 15 minutes works; turn the cubes once so they colour evenly.
- Dry all the way throughThis is the hinge. Croutons meant for storage must be crisp to the centre, not just browned on the surface. Any moisture left inside will soften the whole jar within a few days and can go musty.
- Why stale breadDay-old or older bread cuts into clean cubes without tearing or compressing under the knife. Fresh bread will also work but wants a slightly longer, slower bake to drive off the extra water.
- No fat hereThese are plain oven-dried cubes, not the butter- or oil-tossed croutons of modern salads. The recipe calls for no fat at all, which suits jar storage, since fat is what turns rancid on a shelf. Add butter or oil at the moment of serving if you want it.
- StorageCool completely before jarring, as the original insists; warm cubes will steam and sweat inside the glass. Sealed and dry, they keep several weeks at room temperature.
- YieldA few slices of bread go a long way; reckon on roughly a cup of cubes per slice, a small handful to a bowl of soup.
- ServingAdd them to the bowl at the table, not to the pot. In hot broth they soften quickly.
Crouton is simply the French croûton, a diminutive of croûte, crust — a bit of crust. The practice behind it is far older than the French name: dried or toasted bread has served as a thickener, a soup garnish and a way of using up stale loaves across European cooking for centuries, and older English cookery often calls the same thing "sippets" when cut in triangles or fingers. Its place in a soup chapter reflects a household economy in which bread was baked at home in quantity and nothing was thrown out; drying the leftovers and sealing them in glass jars turned a surplus into a shelf-stable garnish. The jars themselves are a small period marker — by the early twentieth century screw-top and clamp-lid glass canning jars were cheap and standard equipment in an American kitchen, and they were used for dry storage as well as for putting up fruit.