Homemade Croutons

I love croutons. I started eating salads as a way to legitimately consume croutons. However, croutons are somewhat expensive and oily. Also, they come in small packages for the way I eat. Recently, I started making my own croutons. It’s easy and cheap.

Basic recipe: Cube some bread. Toss with a little oil and seasoning (I use Italian seasoning). Toast in the oven for a while. Cool. Store in tightly sealed container.

Tips:

• When you’re baking something in the oven, prepare the bread while waiting. Put the bread in the oven whenever, take the bread out after you finish eating the meal. You can even turn off the oven while they finish toasting. Forget about the croutons till morning? No problem, they’ll just be dry. Like croutons are supposed to be, anyway.
• Use the tail end of a loaf of bread, then toss the oil and bread in the bread bag.
• Save the crusts from bread in the freezer for a while, since crusts are fine for croutons.
• Experiment with cube size and amount of oil until you’re happy. I don’t measure such things, but, roughly, I might use 3-4 tablespoons of oil for 10 slices of bread.
• If you want to use less oil: Shake some spices over the bread on the baking sheet, then spray with cooking spray.
• Don’t even try to mess with the broiler for this job.
• It might take 15 minutes at 350 degrees to bake these, dependent upon your cube size, amount of oil, and type of bread used.