So many of us are stuck with leftover challa each week, wondering what to do with it.
You can:
1. Guiltily throw it away (and think about how they would give anything for a morsel of bread during the holocaust!)
2. Feed it to the birds (whenever I do this with my kids, they start feeding themselves the challa, instead of the birds!)
3. Make French Toast on Sunday morning.
4. Use it for Sunday lunch sandwiches.
5. Save it for bread pudding/challa kugel for later in the week.
6. Make stuffing for your leftover Shabbos chicken (I love to repurpose leftovers!)
7. Make garlic bread.
8. Make home-made croutons.
9. Make home-made bread crumbs.
10. Stuff it in your freezer, only to pull it out Erev Pesach and burn it with the chometz.
This week, I really wanted to make bread crumbs with my leftover Ezekiel English Muffin. Going into summer with lots of pregnancy weight left to lose, I’m trying to watch my carbs. I absolutely love Ezekiel bread because it is low in carbs (only 35 on the GI index), it’s completely flourless and made of 100% organic sprouted whole grain making it a complete protein. You can read more about it here. I especially love the muffins because I can use them as burger buns, challa rolls, and in place of bagels. I usually take two rolls out of the freezer before shabbos, one for the Friday night meal, and one for Shabbos day. This week, I took out an extra one, and decided to use it to make healthy bread crumbs to use in meatballs and other recipes.
Making breadcrumbs is fairly easy. You’ll need day-old bread (I prefer not to use stale bread, because you’ll be left with stale bread crumbs), which has been left out to dry, or toasted at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes (turning over in the middle). Once the bread has been dried and cooled, simply tear it into pieces and blend in the food processor until crumbly (but not too fine). If you wish, you may add oregano, basil, garlic powder and salt for seasoned bread crumbs.
Cool bread crumbs completely and store in an airtight container or freezer bag, date, and freeze. Lasts approximately 3 months.
You can find Ezekiel bread in the freezer section of many supermarkets and most health food stores.
Great tips. Usually all of my leftover challah gets devoured Sunday morning as French toast. But I will have to try those bread crumbs. What a great idea.
I made breadcrumbs on Friday using sour dough bread. It needed very little seasoning and added a really great taste to the chicken. Reading your post has me totally craving croutons now – good thing I have a whole loaf of challah leftover.
Very cute list about using up challah! I have a tip (this applies to regular challah, not sure about Ezekiel bread): cube your challah and dry it out in the oven set on low heat. The dried out cubes keep a long time. They are great for stuffing recipes and can be also crushed in the food processor for crumbs.
I never thought about using Ezekiel bread for crumbs–very interesting idea.
My sister actually learned how to sprout her own grains for making this bread!
thanks Laura! Do you freeze those cubes or leave them out? How long do they last?
You can leave them out and they will last forever (or, rather, until you have to throw them away before Pesach–but save ten of the cubes for Bedikat Chometz)
Won’t 5 lbs. of flour too much for this challah? I just need to clarify if it is meant to be 5 cups.
Thank you.
which challah recipe is that? You seem to have commented on things to do with leftover challah…
This has become my go to recipe! I love the sweetness.
One question: I tried baking them in a dark aluminum loaf pan for the first time last week instead of a disposable pan. The challahs seemed to bake faster bc they were dryer on the inside than usual. Would you recommend cutting the bake time (I baked it 32 min when that happened) or lowering the oven temperature?
I would lower the oven temp by 25 degrees.