Don't Toss That Old Sourdough Loaf: Reuse It In These 5 Genius Ways Instead

Whether you've been a sourdough enthusiast since it became super trendy during the height of the pandemic or you've just taken up bread baking as a hobby, you may find yourself becoming overzealous and making too much. As a rule of thumb, it's best not to bake more bread than you're likely to eat in a day or so, unless you plan to freeze the loaves (and have sufficient freezer space to do so). But even if you heed the best ways to store homemade bread so it stays fresh, no loaf will last very long. While it's possible to bring stale sourdough back to life with water, a better bet is to make a plan for the leftovers.

Here for your consideration are five different ideas from YouTube cooks. All of these recipes can be made with stale sourdough, and in fact, stale bread is often better than fresh for cooking purposes. For one thing, it soaks up more moisture, so it works well in recipes with liquid ingredients. It also has a head start on becoming dry and crumbly if you're wanting to use it as a casserole topper or a coating for fried food. 

One caveat about stale sourdough: Most recipes (including the ones below) require that the leftover loaf be sliced or chopped, which necessitates using a loaf you can still get a knife into. If this is no longer possible, you can use your trusty box grater to transform rock-hard sourdough bread into crunchy crumbs.

A stale sourdough loaf can be repurposed into a hearty morning meal with the addition of eggs and a few other ingredients. YouTuber Amy Bakes Bread starts by filling a baking pan with small sourdough chunks, diced vegetables, and shredded cheese. They then pour a bowlful of beaten eggs over the top before wrapping the pan in foil and sticking it in the oven. While this can serve as a basic template for a savory sourdough casserole, you can, of course, switch things up as you see fit. Add bacon and pair it with cheddar for a classic combo, or go with sausage, mozzarella, tomatoes, and Italian seasoning for something more Mediterranean. If southwestern is more your style, combine chorizo and green chiles with pepper jack.

Sourdough can also be used in a sweet dish, such as one of Giada De Laurentiis' French toast breakfast casseroles. Start by soaking chunks of sourdough bread in a mixture of eggs and milk sweetened with sugar, maple syrup, or honey, perhaps adding vanilla extract, cinnamon, or more unexpected French toast bake mix-ins like cardamom or nutmeg. Once the bread has absorbed the liquid, you can add toppings such as blueberries, chocolate chips, shredded coconut, or ricotta cheese.

Homemade croutons instantly elevate any salad, and they're also good on soups or as a snack. Sourdough, as it happens, is one of the best types of bread for croutons, since its sturdy structure and crusty exterior make for a satisfying crunch when toasted. YouTuber Muscle Momma Sourdough cuts a leftover loaf into cubes and drizzles them with olive oil before stirring in some seasonings. (They used a basic combination of salt, onion powder, and garlic powder, but you can go to town with dried chiles, powdered cheese, garam masala, or anything else that strikes your fancy.) The croutons are then baked in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until they crisp up.

The oven is the best appliance for making a large batch of croutons. If you just have the heel of a sourdough loaf leftover and want to croutonify it, however, there are other kitchen gadgets you can use for easy croutons. An air fryer will get the job done, since it's essentially just a small convection oven, as will a toaster oven, which is also a miniature version of the larger appliance. Pan-frying croutons is also an option, although one that will require more oil. In this instance, don't season the sourdough croutons before cooking. Instead, add the spices while they're drained but still warm.

Chicken and waffles may be the trendy brunch mashup du jour, but back in midcentury America, the Monte Cristo sandwich — which is basically ham and cheese on French toast — was considered très chic. It's about due for a revival, too, especially with a 2020s twist: tangy sourdough in place of a sweeter bread like brioche or challah.

The YouTube channel Chris Bakes in Ojai has a short video showing a Monte Cristo made with sourdough, sliced ham, smoked turkey, cheddar, Swiss cheese, Kewpie mayo, and Dijon mustard. The sandwich is assembled before being dipped in a mixture of egg beaten with cream and cooked on a panini press. A more traditional recipe may omit the cheddar, although since sourdough itself is a bit of a twist, you can feel free to swap in or out any cheeses you please. (Well, most cheeses, that is. The worst cheeses to use for grilled cheeses and similar sandwiches include too-soggy cottage cheese, non-melty halloumi, and overpowering limburger.) It's also okay to use just one kind of meat and to fry the sandwich in oil or butter in lieu of using a countertop appliance.

If you enjoy sweet and savory flavors together, dust the finished Monte Cristo with powdered sugar and serve it with a side of jam or jelly. These sugary additions date back to the sandwich's early days and are favored by several Disneyland eateries that have been dishing it up this way for a half century or so.

Bread pudding has long been known as one of the best ways to repurpose stale bread into something delicious, but you might not have thought to make it with sourdough due to this bread's rather assertive flavor. Home baker AJ Loves Food, however, assures us that "sourdough bread pudding is AMAZING." They use a plain sourdough loaf, cutting it into cubes and soaking it in a mixture of eggs and milk flavored with bourbon, orange zest, sugar, and vanilla before baking it in the oven. This approach (with or without the optional booze and orange zest) also works well with sweeter loaves such as Costco's bakery blueberry sourdough bread.

If your loaf is loaded with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, or other ingredients that don't strike you as dessert-like, you have the option of making a savory bread pudding instead. Simply omit the sugar and vanilla from the egg batter and replace them with dried herbs and spices. You can also stir in ingredients such as grated cheese, sauteed vegetables, diced ham, or cooked sausage.

Panzanella is a Tuscan-style salad that combines stale bread with garden produce. Traditionally, it may not have been made with a sourdough-style loaf, since this type of bread is more common in southern Italy than in Tuscany, but there's no reason this type of bread won't work. The Grant Bakes YouTube channel suggests making sourdough panzanella by chopping a leftover loaf into chunks and mixing it with salted tomatoes, red onion, and a balsamic vinaigrette seasoned with pepper and basil.

This, of course, isn't the only way to make panzanella, since the only real constant seems to be the bread. Before tomatoes became common in Italian cuisine, panzanella would be made with wild-harvested greens and onions, while more modern iterations add fruit such as strawberries. Boiled eggs, cheese, and olives are also popular additions to the dish, or you could throw in diced salami or pepperoni to make a meaty bread salad. Meatballs would also work — after all, Giada De Laurentiis adds them to arugula salad. Throw some sourdough chunks into the mix, and you'll have a hearty and tasty meatball sub panzanella.