Pain perdu: How the world uses up a loaf of day-old bread

In Ethiopia, the people eat all of their meals with a bread known as injera. It's large, soft, circular, made with a high protein grain called teff and a sourdough starter. For their bread salad, tim tim fit fit, day-old injera is torn into small bits, and mixed with chopped tomato, onion, chilli pepper, and dressed simply with lemon juice, oil, and salt. This is an incredibly refreshing salad, with the soft, absorbent injera soaking up a ton a flavour.

In India, papri chat is a popular street food, and India's answer to bread salad. It's made from shards of yesterday's deep-fried dough, layered with chickpeas, onion, chili pepper, yogurt, tamarind sauce, and finished with a dusting of black salt.

Day-old breads in sumptuous soups
Old bread—crumbs or soaked pieces—has also traditionally been used as a thickening agent in soups. In Spain, crust-less white bread, soaked in olive oil and lemon juice is added to cold gazpacho (image, left) for two reasons: to thicken, and to mute the sharp edges of all those raw, acidic ingredients. Try this trick in our simple Spanish Gazpacho recipe.

And the French and Italians have bread soups, often very simple preparations of broth, garlic, butter or olive oil, and bread, simmered and blended. Cream may or may not be added at the end, depending on the social class of the household. Pappa al pomodoro is a Tuscan bread soup with tomato. The French have an elegant version of bread soup that is confusingly called panade, which also refers to a savoury bread pudding. But really it's a generic term referring to a paste made from bread crumbs and liquid. In this case, panade is a rich, creamy, velouté, with nothing rustic about it.

Speaking of bread pudding, this is one of the sweetest ways to use up stale bread! Often thought of as a strictly British dessert, the Spanish have one of their own called pudin de pan. Basically a mixture of soaked bread, eggs, spices, sugar or syrup, and fat of some sort, often served with a sweet, boozy or creamy sauce. Bread and butter pudding, on the other hand, is a British recipe, that more closely resembles a baked French toast, with the addition of milk or cream to the eggs, thus making a custard. Our Custardy Bread-and-Butter Pudding recipe is a fine example.

And in case you're not already hopelessly confused, French toast isn't French at all. It's actually an American invention, though perhaps the French, who call it pain perdu, or "lost bread", would argue that point. Come to your own conclusion with our decadent  Cherry Cheesecake French Toast recipe made with French Bread.

Whatever! Any way you slice it, bread truly is the staff of life.

Read more:

• Bread machine success

• Crunchy Farmhouse Bread

• Cooking class: Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

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