Croutons are just chunks of not-so-fresh bread baked with butter or olive oil, salt, and any herbs you want to add. Pretty simple! They are crunchy and delicious on salads, on soups, or even pop a couple in your mouth as a snack.
What you need:
- Bread that is a few days old and the end pieces of bread
- Cutting board
- Knife or you can use your hands instead
- Sheet pan or cast-iron skillet
- Olive oil or butter
- Small pan for melting butter if you are using butter.
- Seasoning (salt, herbs, garlic, dijon mustard)
Ingredients & steps
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- You can cut chunks of bread (especially the ends of loaves that are harder to eat), put them in a plastic bag and freeze them until you have enough to bake. Any type of bread is fine to use (wheat, sourdough, rye, white, sandwich-don’t forget to let the bread thaw first if you had it in the freezer!)
- Tear pieces less than an inch or cut the bread into cubes less than an inch. Make sure the pieces are around the same size so they bake evenly. A serrated knife works the best to cut bread if you have one. You should have about 3-4 cups of cubes. Put the cubes in a medium-sized bowl.
- Melt 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a small pan over medium heat.
- Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil in with the butter.
- *optional* Add 1 ½ Tablespoons of dijon mustard to the pan
- Add ¼ teaspoon salt to the pan
- Whisk all the ingredients carefully together in the pan until warm and butter is melted. This mixture will be hot, so be careful
- Pour the mixture over the cubes of bread in the bowl and stir until all the cubes are coated.
- Carefully scoop the cubes onto a baking sheet or large cast-iron skillet and bake in the oven.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden and crunchy. After the first 7 minutes, carefully take the pan out of the oven and flip the croutons around. Then put them back in the oven to finish baking.
- Let cool and save in a sealed container. Enjoy on salad or soups or on their own!
*NOTE: You can use olive oil only if you don’t eat or don’t have butter. If you don’t like mustard, use any other herbs or garlic powder instead. Don’t like those either? No problem. They will still taste delicious with salt and a little pepper and oil. Make them how you want!*
We want to see what you made!
Take a picture or video of you and your fresh croutons and send them to us or tag us on Instagram (@resources_protects)!
