AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
From flaky baguettes to pandemic sourdough to squishy sandwich loaves, bread is the stuff of life. But after a week or so, slices go stale and nobody's eating the crust, and that's when you can start cooking. Deena Prichep reports on a new cookbook devoted entirely to breadcrumbs.
DEENA PRICHEP: Michelle Marek spent years working as a chef in some of Montreal's finest restaurants, but she grew up as a first-generation immigrant to parents from communist Czechoslovakia.
MICHELLE MAREK: To waste food was absolutely not allowed.
PRICHEP: And that included bread. There are classic Czech recipes that use old breadcrumbs to make dumplings for soup or thicken a single beaten egg into a filling omelet. But using breadcrumbs is a staple of traditional cooking in a lot of places.
MAREK: The Italians knew it. The Greeks do it. Any culture that has bread has used breadcrumbs.
PRICHEP: It makes sense. Breadcrumbs helps stretch out a protein - hello, meatloaf - and make use of a scrap that's lying around. But Marek stresses that this isn't some sort of cuisine of deprivation. Breadcrumbs make things better. They hold in liquid to keep dishes moist or add crunchy texture when toasted. The new cookbook "All That Crumbs Allow" by Marek and fellow chef Camilla Wynne uses breadcrumbs to make a pumpernickel black forest torte, fill roast chicken and even bulk up granola and make delicious sweet cheese dumplings.
(SOUNDBITE OF MIXER RUNNING)
PRICHEP: In the mixer, I've got some torn-up bread - I used some old dinner rolls I had knocking around the freezer - then some farmer cheese, sugar, couple of eggs.
(SOUNDBITE OF CRACKING EGG OPEN)
PRICHEP: The bits of bread kind of disappear into the batter. Marek, who walked me through the recipe on Zoom, says unlike with flour, you don't really have to worry about overmixing. It doesn't make things tough because the gluten's already set.
MAREK: It's a fluffy thing because they do act like tiny sponges.
PRICHEP: After a quick simmer, the dumplings are fished out and topped with sweet, crunchy breadcrumbs. To make those, Marek says you can toss dried old bread in the food processor or do it the old-fashioned way.
MAREK: Put it in a Ziploc bag or even between some tea towels and just smash it with your rolling pin. That's how grandmothers used to do it.
PRICHEP: I ended up going with a cheese grater.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRATING BREAD)
MAREK: Just watch your knuckles.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRATING BREAD)
PRICHEP: OK. I'm watching my knuckles.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRATING BREAD)
PRICHEP: It's loud, but it's quick. And Marek says you don't even have to cut the crust off. That's just more flavor. And after the crumbs get sizzled with some butter and sugar...
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL SCRAPING)
PRICHEP: ...They're crunchy and caramelized. The dumplings themselves are like warm cheesecake clouds. And when you toss those sweet pillows with the crispy, buttery crumbs, the result is amazing.
They're so good.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISHES CLINKING)
PRICHEP: It's a pretty impressive dish from what was essentially stale old scraps. But as Michelle Marek points out, this is something that peasant cultures have always understood - the miracle of nothing transformed into something.
For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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