Quick Homemade Croutons

If we’re in spring lean-up mode at Feral Cooks, we eat tons of salads—actually temporarily going vegetarian, as much as that sucks to do. (It’s really effective for leaning up, though.) One problem we run into is running out of croutons—probably due to intermittent snacking on them and failing to buy enough for the week. Given that croutons are pretty much the best part of the salad, they’re critical to have, so if we’re out, I need to toast up a batch.

I made a few batches of these with cut up bread, but torn bread is craggier, so it holds the oil and salt better than a sliced croutons. If you want to slice them, though, knock yourself out.

What you’ll need

• Unsliced bread (preferably dense bread, bagels are great for croutons!)—as much as you want to make croutons from
• Olive oil
• Salt, preferably the salty seasoning from a package of beef, chicken or pork instant ramen

What to do

Begin heating your oven to 350 degrees F.

Add a layer of parchment paper to whatever type of sheet pan on which you’re going to bake the croutons.

Tear off crouton-size pieces of bread of various shapes and sizes and place them on the sheet pan, preferably a bit of space between them. When you have all the croutons torn off, drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the pieces, and salt them to taste.

When your oven reaches temperature, bake the croutons for 10 minutes. At that point, they should be slightly browned. Turn the temperature down to 250 degrees and bake them for 10 more minutes. At this point they should be browned and crisped all the way through. If they’re still soft in the middle, continue baking them at the lower temperature until they’re done to your liking.

Let them completely cool on the sheet pan before bagging them for later use.