Packaged croutons may lead the way in useless foods sold at the supermarket. For the price of a box of croutons you can buy a loaf of good bread, let it get stale, and make the equivalent of five boxes of terrific croutons, without chemistry-class additives—just olive oil and salt. Croutons, of course, are one of the many ways to use up leftover day-old bread (bread pudding, bread crumbs, and bread salad are some others), and to make really good ones you need the kind of bread that will actually get stale, not bagged, sliced sandwich loaves that just start growing mold once they’re past their prime. Really, any French- or Italian-style loaf will do, though the better the bread, the better the crouton. This is a recipe for the most basic of croutons—you could rub the torn bread with a peeled garlic clove or scatter some chopped fresh rosemary over it before it goes in the oven—but this is the place to start. Many people remove the crust from bread before making croutons; I do not.
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