The Perfect Homemade Crouton

I cannot fathom eating the ready-made, shelf stable croutons sold next to the bread crumbs in the grocery store. Especially when making these delicious little nibblets is so easy (I made up the word “nibblet”, by the way, but isn’t it perfect?). This is the only homemade crouton recipe you will ever need.

Notes:

Bread:

Use the right bread. A good, dense artisan country loaf or baguette is best. Under no circumstances will you use sliced sandwich bread, whole grain bread, or that cheap styrofoam-like loaf you can find at chain grocery stores. None of those will work. Just forget about it.

Whenever I have a good loaf of bread that we haven’t managed to consume before it goes stale (which is often), I cut the stale bread into crouton-size cubes, toss the bread cubes in my freezer, and then when I need to make croutons, I just take them straight from the freezer and throw them into the frying pan. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!

Oil: use a lot!

Use a lot of oil. More than you think. You almost can’t use too much. I want to see a visible slick of oil covering the bottom of your pan. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF OIL- it’s what makes your food taste delicious!! And when the bread cubes start to soak up your oil, don’t hesitate to add more to make sure every bread surface is saturated with oil. Oil, oil oil!! You are really making fried bread cubes, but croutons sounds way fancier, so that’s what we’ll call them.

Size matters:

I like my croutons cut into roughly 3/4 inch cubes. I find anything larger than that messes up the bread/salad ratio in every bite, and anything smaller isn’t substantial enough to get that good crouton flavor. But you do you- experiment and figure out what size you like.

The perfect crouton

The Salt Monster

This post will teach you how to make the best homemade croutons imaginable

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Course Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine American

Servings 2 cups croutons

Ingredients

  

Homemade Croutons

• 2 cups artisan country loaf or baguette  cut in 3/4 inch cubes
• 1/3 cup olive oil

Instructions

 

To make croutons:

• Heat the oil over medium high heat in a skillet large enough to easily toss your croutons during cooking.
• Stir the bread cubes in the oil to ensure every bread surface is well coated with oil. Continue to stir while the bread cubes brown.
  
• Make sure they’re adequately browned, but don’t burn them. I recommend never turning your back on the suckers as they cook. Continue to stir until done then remove from heat.
  
• Use these in The Best Ever Caesar Salad.

Keyword Caesar, crouton, salad, salads