Bread Omelet
1/2 cup stale bread crumbs ¾ teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon butter Soak bread crumbs fifteen minutes in milk, add beaten yolks and seasonings, fold in whites. Cook and serve as Plain Omelet. ½ eggs 4 tablespoons milk
A puffy folded omelet stretched with soaked bread crumbs, from the era when eggs were dear and stale bread was never thrown out. It behaves like a small souffle, so the whites and the pan matter more than the timing.
- Salt quantityThe salt reads as 3/4 teaspoon, which is right for four eggs plus crumbs. Pepper is 1/8 teaspoon.
- The milkFour tablespoons for half a cup of dry crumbs gives a stiff paste, not a soak. Fifteen minutes is enough for the crumbs to swell; if your bread is very dry, add a spoonful more milk rather than extending the time.
- Stale bread crumbsThis means crumbs torn or grated from day-old firm white bread, not the dried sandy kind sold in canisters. Commercial dry crumbs absorb differently and will make the omelet heavy.
- Folding the whitesBeat the whites until they hold a peak and fold in two additions, working quickly so the crumb-and-yolk paste is evenly lightened and no white streaks remain.
- Cook and serve as Plain OmeletThat means a heated pan with the tablespoon of butter, the mixture poured in and cooked slowly until set underneath, the pan then moved to the oven to finish cooking the top, and the omelet folded onto a hot platter. No temperature is given.
- Pan sizeUse an 8-inch skillet with sloping sides. A wider pan spreads the batter too thin for the puffed texture the crumbs are meant to support.
- YieldFour eggs with crumbs serves two generously, or three as part of a larger breakfast. Serve immediately; a puffed omelet sinks within a few minutes.
Bread omelets belong to the thrift tradition that runs through Fannie Farmer's egg chapter, where the plain omelet is followed by a long file of variations stretched with other ingredients. Around 1900 an omelet was expected to be light and risen rather than the soft French roll familiar today, and soaked crumbs did double duty: they added bulk and helped hold the beaten whites up in a heavy iron pan finished in the oven. The Boston Cooking School's method of separating the eggs and folding the whites was taught deliberately as a technique, since the same principle governed souffles and puddings elsewhere in the book.