Giving stale bread a new lease of Life
I have been baking my own bread for a while now. Besides the joy of filling my kitchen with an enviable aroma of freshly baked bread, it’s more to have the peace of mind knowing what goes into the food I feed my family with. I usually bake on weekends, and then cut the loaf of bread into portions to freeze for the week. Every night, I would take out a portion to thaw for the following day’s breakfast. So there is hardly any chance for the bread to go stale. However, there are times when my child decides that she wanted something different for breakfast, or at times the bread turned out too dry, and so we ended up having some stale bread. To give it a new lease of life, I transform the bread into a protein-packed, quick and easy bread muffins to fit into the weekday breakfast or as a snack.
I used wholemeal bread for this recipe, but you can always use a sweet bread like brioche or fruit bread, and use slightly lesser milk than that indicated in the recipe. I also added a variation to the recipe for a savoury twist, with no refined sugar added.
Do try this simple recipe – I made this on a weekday morning; the oven did most of the works as I get about preparing for the start of the day!
Wholemeal bread muffins (Serves 4)
Ingredients:
8 thick slices of stale wholemeal bread
250ml low fat milk
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
20g brown sugar
Dried fruits of your choice – dried cranberries, chopped apricots, blueberries or raisins makea nice combination of colours
Method:
Preheat oven to 170 degree celcius. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan.
Cut or tear bread into small pieces. I like to cut them into squares, you may also cut some into fancy shapes and put them at the top of the pile in the muffin cups. Distribute the bread pieces equally into the muffin cups. Fill up to half, layer with a few dried fruits and top with the rest of the bread pieces.
In a measuring cup with a pout (to make for easy pouring), whisk the eggs with sugar till frothy and sugar is dissolved. Pour in the milk and vanilla extract, continue to whisk till well blended.
Slowly pour the mixture onto the bread, allowing it to flow into and soak the bread pieces. Top a few more pieces of dried fruits for decoration. Allow mixture to rest for 10-20minutes for optimal result in texture and taste as the bread soak up the milk mixture.
If you desire a soft muffin with a crispy top, soak ¾ of the bread in the muffin cups for 10-15 minutes, then top with the rest of the bread (those cut into fancy shapes) and dried fruits and soak for another 5 minutes before popping them into the oven.
Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Serve warm.
* Some variations:
For savoury muffins, omit brown sugar and dried fruits, replace with caramelised onions, with a dash of salt and pepper whisked into the egg in step 3. Top with grated mozarella cheese in step 5 for extra protein and a lovely crusty top.