Actually very easy

Breadcrumbs

The beliefBreadcrumbs are taken for a product of their own, something you have to buy.

The truthIt is stale bread dried and ground. The loaf you were about to throw away is the best raw material.

Five minutes of work, half an hour in the oven

How to make it

What you need

Stale bread, as much as you have
A processor or a grater

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Stale bread

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Tear the bread into large pieces. Keep the crust: it makes a crunchier, better-coloured crumb.
Spread it in a single layer and dry it at 150 °C for 25 to 30 minutes. You want it dry, not coloured — browned crumbs burn when you cook with them.
Cool it completely. Warm bread steams in the grinder and the crumbs clump.
Blitz it: thirty seconds for fine crumbs, ten for the coarse, crunchy kind.
Sieve it into fine and coarse if you like: the fine for köfte and sauces, the coarse for frying.

Why it works

The job of a breadcrumb is to build a crust, and to do it the crumb has to be dry. Below 10% moisture it both keeps for a long time and, in hot oil, takes up heat fast enough to push its surface past 140 °C and start Maillard. A damp or half-dry crumb has to boil off its own water first, and while it does, oil seeps in and the coating turns greasy. The second question is particle size: coarse crumbs give a more open, crunchier crust, fine crumbs a smoother but harder surface. Drying in the oven is not the same as leaving bread out — bread left out goes stale without losing much moisture, which is why it can still mould, while oven-dried bread genuinely dries.

Diets it qualifies for

Gluten-free Vegan Vegetarian Lactose-free

Storage & shelf life

How long it keeps

Sealed jar in a dry cupboard: 3 months
Seasoned crumbs: 1 month
Freezer: 1 year
Half dried: Does not keep

The only enemy of breadcrumbs is moisture. Properly dried, their water activity is low enough to keep for months; half dried, they mould within a fortnight and you may not smell it. Do not keep the jar above the hob or on a steamy shelf. Wholemeal crumbs keep less well than white, because the oil in the bran turns rancid over time — keep those in the freezer.

When to bin it Mould, a cellar smell or a bitter taste means it goes. Bitterness is not mould but the bran oil gone rancid, and it does not come back.

History

Where it comes from

Breadcrumbs come from a way of thinking in which nothing in a kitchen is thrown away. In Anatolia stale bread is never binned: it becomes papara, tirit, the binder in köfte, or it is dried and ground. That is usually told as a reflex of poverty, but it is technically right as well — stale bread makes better crumbs than fresh, because retrogradation has made it more brittle and easier to grind. The word galeta comes from the Italian *galletta*, ship’s biscuit: bread twice-baked and dried for long voyages. Even the etymology carries the idea — drying bread to protect it from time.

The knack

Drop a piece of dried bread into the jar. If damp gets in, it goes there first and the crumbs stay dry.
Thyme, garlic powder and paprika make a seasoned crumb — but use it within a month: spices bring both moisture and oil.
Toasting the crumbs briefly in a dry pan before you use them makes the crust noticeably crisper: they are already dry when they meet the oil.

Dough and grain