A stale old crust of bed deserves more than being binned. With a little practice you can bake new bread from it. Christin Klose/dpa
Don't be too hasty when it comes to throwing away stale bread or other items you have baked.
You can use dried out crusts in a whole new loaf, says baking specialist Lutz Geissler. He is a fan of preventing waste and creates recipes from old or left over bread.
Take any dry left over bread and place it in the oven at 120 to 130 degrees Celsius. That process will give your bread dough a more intense aroma and a juicier crumb.
Then grind the dry leftovers in a mixer or grate them and leave it in water to rest overnight. Then take the swollen leftovers and mix them in with the other ingredients for your next bread recipe.
Take care and measure the amount of water you add to the bread scraps to avoid the dough becoming too watery.
The next question is the water temperature. Choose cold or boiling water depending on how much water the dough needs to bind.
For doughs that already contain a lot of water in the basic recipe, go for cold water. But if you're making a firm dough, go for boiling water.
The ratio should be twice as much cold water as old bread. Or, for boiling water, use three times the amount, says Geissler.
All in all, you should not add more than 10% to 15% ground old bread compared to the total amount of flour.
So for every 100 grams of flour, make sure you have no more than 10 to 15 grams of old bread. Otherwise your dough may wind up too soft and the resulting bread might be too moist.
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