Dough Conditioners, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, and Ferrous Sulfate ... that's the way the breadcrumb crumbles

Garlic Bread Dough in machine

Ingredients for Garlic Bread

Several weeks ago, my mother-in-law came for a visit.  It's kind of tradition when she comes that we (and by we, I mean she) make salmon patties.  We eat them with mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, and spinach.  I don't really have any "traditions" from my own childhood so I love that we've created little ones here and there for my own kids.

So, anyway, there we are in the kitchen, doing what we do.  She asks for the breadcrumbs.  I give her the breadcrumbs.  WHOA!  Wait a minute!  Have you ever read the ingredient list for breadcrumbs?  Surprisingly, I never had.  Even more surprising, she never had either.  So, there we are shocked to learn that there were THIRTY-TWO INGREDIENTS!  (Yes, you read that right.) IN BREAD CRUMBS!

Now, I have been blessed with quite a husband.  He's opinionated, loud, and sometimes moody, but one of the many awesome things about him is that his lips stay zipped when it comes to my kitchen desires.  I have the food processor of my dreams and a double paddle bread machine that rocks out loaves of bread that look very much like their store-bought counterparts.  I have a bread slicer, too, so they're even sliced very much like store-bought bread.  This is VERY important since my son is at the age of school cafeteria conformity.

Loaf of Garlic Bread

Back to breadcrumbs.  Since I make my own bread, I've been leaving a few pieces out of every loaf to harden.  Once the pieces are hard, I break them up into smaller pieces and finish the job in the Baby Bullet (I have two of those thanks to those preciously zipped lips) using the milling blade. Once the bread is milled, I dump the crumbs into a storage container and stick it in the freezer.  (I'm not discriminatory.  Whether it's french, whole wheat, garlic, etc., it all goes into the same storage container.)  Voilà!  Preservative-free breadcrumbs!!  It's that easy ...and a fraction of the cost to boot!

Breadcrumbs made from whole wheat, french, and garlic bread scraps!

A note about the milling process, which I learned the hard way.  1)  Don't use a food processor unless you have a special milling blade.  The regular blade doesn't do a good enough job AND the pieces will inevitably get EVERYWHERE.  Use a Bullet, Baby Bullet, Blender, or anything else that has a milling blade; and 2) Break up the hard bread into a bunch of small pieces.  This makes the process much easier on your machine.

Homemade breadcrumbs . . . the best thing since homemade sliced bread!