Stale Bread Is The Unexpected Secret To The Best Grilled Cheese

There's nothing more frustrating than your bread going stale before you're able to use it up, especially if it's high-quality bread. Luckily, we have a solution for you: use it to make yourself a grilled cheese.

You may be wondering how well using stale bread for this would work out — after all, we want grilled cheese to be as delicious as possible, and stale bread isn't exactly associated with tastiness. Trust us, it will still be just as tasty as it is with fresh bread. As it turns out, the fat from the cheese and the heat from the stove helps to revive the stale bread, making it taste like new. Plus, because stale bread is drier than fresh bread, it'll brown better, making for an ultra-crispy grilled cheese.

So next time you find yourself with stale bread, there's no need to fret — just make yourself the ultimate grilled cheese.

Making grilled cheese is actually not the only solution for using up stale bread. In fact, there's a way to utilize stale bread for just about every meal. To start with, stale bread works perfectly for a batch of French toast in the morning — you want the bread to be dry so that it does a better job at soaking up all of the custard mixture.

Then, when it comes time for lunch or dinner, stale bread can be utilized for croutons to complete a salad or as the base for a panzanella. Croutons are easy to make yourself. All you do is tear up bread pieces, toss them in olive oil, and bake them. Your salad will be even more satisfying knowing that you made them yourself. Meanwhile, panzanella is a bread-centric salad that actually requires stale bread. 

Finally, when it comes to dessert, there's one dish that is the perfect vessel for using up stale bread: bread pudding. This is because, just like with French toast, bread that is drier will be better at soaking up all of the sweetness from the other ingredients, making for a moist and delicious treat.