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Bread Croutons, Heart Shaped
Cut six thin slices from a loaf of sandwich bread. Nicely pare them, then cut them into small heart-shaped croutons. Lay them on a tin plate, drip a little clarified butter over them and place in the hot oven for four minutes, or until they obtain a good golden colour. Take out of the oven and use when required.
A garnish rather than a dish: buttered bread shapes crisped in the oven, meant to be set around a stew, a purée or a plate of creamed game. A few details need translating.
- "Hot oven"In a book of this vintage a hot or quick oven is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Four minutes is plausible at that heat for thin slices; check at three, since the butter browns before the bread does.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids removed, so it will not scorch or speckle at high heat. Melt butter gently, skim the foam, pour off the clear fat and leave the milky residue behind. Ghee works as-is.
- Tin plateA thin tinned-steel baking sheet. Any light-coloured sheet pan does the job; a dark heavy one will colour the undersides faster than the tops, so turn them once.
- "Nicely pare"Trim off all crust so the slices are square and even. Crust and crumb crisp at different rates, and a crust edge on a crouton looks unfinished under a sauce.
- Sandwich breadA close-grained white pan loaf, day-old rather than fresh. Fresh bread tears under a cutter and soaks up butter unevenly; slightly stale slices hold the heart shape cleanly.
- Cutting the heartsA small aspic or cookie cutter, around 1 1/2 inches, is a usual size. Six slices may yield something like two dozen depending on the cutter and the loaf; scraps toast alongside and can be crumbled for another use.
- Holding themThey keep crisp for a day in an airtight tin and revive in a 300F oven for two or three minutes. Set them on a moist dish only at the last moment, or they soften within minutes.
Heart-shaped croutons are a fixture of the classical French repertoire rather than an invention of this book: cro yons en coeur, their points dipped in sauce and then in chopped parsley, traditionally ring a dish of veal or a civet, and the same shape turns up around eggs, pur yes and saut yed kidneys. The word simply means a little crust.