Dried Bread Cubes
Making your own dry bread for stuffing or for other recipes like French toast, croutons, bread pudding, or Panzella salad is super easy! Learn how to dry out bread quickly in the oven or on your counter.
Ingredients
- 1 loaf of bread white or wheat
Instructions
Dried Bread Cubes
- Use a serrated knife to cut your bread of choice into ½"-1" cubes. Or for a rustic twist, you can tear the bread by hand into small bite-size pieces.
- Evenly spread the bread cubes out on a baking sheet and cover it with a thin clean kitchen towel. Let the bread chunks dry out at room temperature for 2-3 days.
Drying Bread in Oven
- Preheat the oven to 250 F. Cut the loaf of bread into ½"-1" cubes.
- Spread the bread cubes on a large rimmed baking sheet (the recipe used 13"x18").
- Bake the bread cubes for 30-40+ minutes until they're totally dried out and crisp for ½" cubes. If you're using bread cubes up to 1" in size they'll take even longer to dry out, but stir them every 30 minutes.
- Remove them from the oven and set them aside to cool.
- Use them in your favorite stuffing recipe, for croutons, bread pudding, and more! The dried bread cubes can be made 3-4 days in advance before using them in a recipe.
Notes
- We used a pre-sliced sandwich loaf for recipe testing. If you're cubing a heavy dense bread they could take longer than 30 minutes to dry out in the oven at 250 F.
- a ½" cube was used for making stuffing, if you're making French toast casserole, bread pudding, or Panzella salad you might prefer a 1" cube.
- How many dry bread cubes you'll need for your stuffing recipe depends on the recipe quantity. A 9x9 pan of stuffing uses about a ½ loaf of bread (4 cups of dried breading) and a 9x13 pan would use a full large loaf of bread (or 8 cups of dried bread).
- To season the bread cubes before baking, toss them in a bowl with olive oil and your seasoning of choice like Italian seasoning before baking. They'd be terrific in salads too!
- Drying out the bread for stuffing works for white bread, wheat bread, French, Challah, rye, keto bread, and gluten-free bread.
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