Skip to main content
Bread

Prepared Bread Crumbs

A method for making homemade bread crumbs from stale bread, flour, baking powder, butter, salt, egg white, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Prepared Bread Crumbs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the crumbs

  1. Break stale bread into small bits and place them on a baking pan.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven, watching closely to prevent scorching.

  3. Once hot and crisp, crush the bread and sift it.

  4. Use fine crumbs for breading and coarse crumbs for puddings or pancakes.

Make the crackers

  1. For crackers, sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.

  2. Add melted butter, salt, beaten egg white, and milk; mix to form a stiff dough.

  3. Knead the dough well, then roll it out thin like pie crust.

  4. Cut into rounds or squares and bake until light brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Dried and crushed into crumbs that give breading and puddings their body.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cracker dough together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crackers rise and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and promotes light browning.
Egg white
Binds the dough and helps it set firm during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Watching the crumbs in the oven. Bread dries and browns quickly at the end, so it can scorch before it is fully crisp. Scorched crumbs taste bitter, and under-dried ones stay soft and go stale fast.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More bread crumbs recipes

Fried 24 See all 10 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipes