More Salads Recipes
Instant Garlic Croutons
Ingredients
2 slice wholewheat bread
1 clove garlic (chopped fine)
3 tablespoon olive oil
freshly ground black pepper (some)
Instructions
Cuisine: Italian, Type: garnish / condiment
Duration: 9 mins, Preparation: 5 mins, Cooking: 4 mins, Serves: n/a
Nutrition:★★★★☆, Taste:★★★★★, Complexity:★★☆☆☆
- Description: Croutons are tiny cubes of bread toasted or fried in fat, and served as garnish on soups, salad, pasta and other dishes. Croutons have a very crunchy texture and impart an appetizing aroma and combine well with toasted garlic and black pepper. This recipe uses fresh bread instead of stale bread and can be prepared very quickly.
- Preheat the oven at 150°C (300°F) for 5 minutes.
- Place the bread slice into the toaster and toast lightly to a firm texture.
- Cut and set aside the bread skins from all four sides. Cut the bread into 0.5cm thin strips. Line the strips together and cut into 0.5cm x 0.5cm small cubes.
- Place the croutons on a flat metal plate, top with finely chopped garlic, drizzle with olive oil and mix well.
- Grind some black pepper over the croutons.
- Bake for about 4 minutes until golden brown (golden yellow if you are using white bread), sizzling and crisp with a wonderful aroma.
- Use as intended or allow to cool before storing in airtight container for up to 3 days. To revive old crouton which have become soft, bake briefly in the oven until crisp again.
(Step 3) Small cubes make better croutons than large cubes because they have more surface and therfore absorb more flavour and are baked to a more crisp texture.
- (Step 3) You could also bake the bread skin together with the crouton. When baked, the bread skin will taste a little like crunchy breadstick, not bad at all.
(Step 4) This recipe uses olive oil to replace the more commonly used butter. The flavour is equivalent to that of butter.
(Step 6) Croutons made from wholewheat bread have a golden brown appearance instead of the usual golden yellow, but is as flavourful as white bread croutons and more wholesome.