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Croustades of Bread
With a cooky cutter, shape stale bread into circles, diamonds or squares, having them one and onehalf inches high. Remove the centers, leaving cavities sufficient to hold about two tablespoons of any suitable mixture. Fry these cases in deep fat or, if preferred, brush over with melted butter and set in the oven to brown. When prepared, these may be filled with creamed meat, fish, game or vegetables.
A simple technique piece: bread cases to hold a creamed filling. The only real variables are the bread and the frying temperature.
- The bread matters mostStale means dry and firm, not merely a day old and still soft. A close-crumbed white loaf, unsliced, cut into 1½-inch slabs, is what the recipe assumes; airy modern sandwich bread collapses when hollowed and soaks up fat. Leave slices uncovered overnight if the loaf is fresh.
- Hollowing the casesCut the outline with a large cutter, then press a smaller cutter down and lift the plug out with a knife tip. Leave roughly a quarter-inch floor so the filling does not leak.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat for bread wants 375F. Cooler and the crumb drinks oil; hotter and the outside colors before the walls set. Fry a minute or two to an even gold, then drain hollow side down on paper.
- The oven methodBrushed with melted butter, the cases want a hot oven; the recipe gives no temperature, but around 400F for 10 to 15 minutes, turning once, will brown them. They come out drier and lighter than fried ones.
- Two tablespoons is the working measureThat is the cavity size the recipe specifies, so a croustade is a single mouthful or two.
- Fill at the last momentA croustade filled more than a few minutes ahead goes soft at the base. Have the creamed mixture hot and the cases hot, and assemble as they go to the table.
- Suitable mixturesAnything bound thick enough to sit still: creamed chicken, minced ham in béchamel, oysters, mushrooms, peas in cream. A thin sauce will run out the bottom seam.
Croustade comes through French from the same root as crust, and in nineteenth-century service it meant any edible container — fried bread, pastry, hollowed rice, even a shell of duchess potato — used to hold a made dish so it could be set on a platter. It appears in the Butterick Cook Book, from a publisher better known for dress patterns.