Regeneration: Food | Bread

If your loaf of bread has gone stale: Dampen a tea towel and wrap your loaf of bread in it. Place it in the oven on a low setting (130-150 degrees) for 5-10 minutes. Remove from the oven and you’ll see your loaf of bread come back to life, it can now be eaten or frozen.

Homemade Croutons

Bread is one of the most wasted foods not just in the UK, but also around the world. Many food cultures around the world repurpose old bread and one thing you can make is croutons. Why not give this a try and ditch buying ready-made croutons. A really simple easy recipe that I’m sure you’re going to enjoy/

Carefully cut up your bread into small chunks, roughly an inch or so. Add the pieces to a mixing bowl and drizzle over 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Season with salt and smoked paprika and mix well. Either add your bread chunks to your frying pan over a high heat until the edges are golden and crispy or place on an oven tray to crisp up for 10 minutes at 180 degrees. These homemade croutons are a great addition to a soup, salad or stew.

Breaded Tofu Fingers

Being from the States, fish fingers were never really a staple food choice in my childhood. Here is an easy and delicious alternative to make your lonely piece of tofu exciting and tasty - no fish needed! And a great way to use up your leftover stale bread.

1 block firm Tofu, roughly 300g

30g cornstarch

125ml plant-based milk

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

Your stale bread, made into breadcrumbs

Preheat your oven to 180C.

First make your breadcrumbs by adding your stale bread to a food processor or blender and blending until your bread is roughly processed into a breadcrumb consistency - you may have to do this in batches if your blender is small or you have a lot of bread. At this point, you can also freeze any breadcrumbs that you’re not going to be using.

Prepare your tofu by cutting it into 2cm slices, you can cut these in half again if you’d like smaller breaded tofu fingers. Taking 3 small bowls, add your milk to one, your cornstarch to another and your breadcrumbs to the third with a pinch of salt and pepper. Taking your piece of tofu, first coat it completely in cornstarch before dunking it into the milk bowl. Finally drop it into your breadcrumbs and make sure all the sides are covered before placing it onto a baking tray. Repeat for all your pieces of tofu. It might be a good idea to lightly oil your baking tray if it’s not non-stick.

Bake your breaded tofu for 10-15 minutes until the breadcrumbs are golden and crispy with the tofu pieces cooked and juicy inside. .

You can eat this as a snack or with a meal.

Enjoy!