Are You Staring At My Breads?

Dear Bread Lover,

Are you ever canoodling with a fresh loaf of bread, loving it, rubbing it all over your face and then you start to get sad, thinking about the future when that bread is no longer young and fresh the way that you once were? Well, never you fear! I have the perfect use for old bread. Keep reading.

I like to make crostini with my soon-to-be-moldy-and-disgusting bread. This way, you’re not wasting food and you have a delightful treat to serve your unexpected guests. Speaking of unexpected guests, I have this fantasy that I live in a world where people are always showing up at my door out of the blue. In real life, this has never happened. In fact, I haven’t had a guest since 2001. That is a lie. Kind of. In this fantasy they show up at the door and I always magically have a bottle of sparkling wine perfectly chilled and a ready-made appetizer just sitting in my fridge, waiting for us to enjoy it as we sit and talk about how difficult our lives are, how no one understands us, and how worried we are that 90s style is back in fashion already.

Okay, onto making the crostini…

The first step is to not let your bread get too old and gross. If it’s too hard it will never make good crostini and you’ll probably throw your back out trying to slice it. Second, slice the bread as thin as you possibly can without chopping off your fingertips. And honestly, if you have to chop off a finger or two, that is far preferable to having thick, hard crostini that are impossible to bite through.

After slicing, pour olive oil into a stylish Japanese bowl and dab it onto the bread with your fingers. If you are fancy and/or a legitimate grown up, use a pastry brush to light coat the bread with olive oil.

Then, drizzle your bread with balsamic vinegar. Just slosh it all over like you’re a drunk clown with a bottle of whisky.

After the olive oil and balsamic, add salt and pepper and stick it in the oven. Bake at 450 degrees until golden brown, about 8 minutes.

My go-to hors d’œuvre is this crostini with a thinly sliced piece of avocado on top, sprinkled with Himalayan pink sea salt. It seems really chic and glamourous but really it’s the easiest thing to prepare (especially if you have these delicious crostini lying around). Win.

After this post, you no longer have any excuse to waste bread ever again. So don’t even think about it. You can do this with any kind of bread, but obviously the artisanal bakery variety will produce a more delicious product. This baking method works extremely well with tortillas, pita, or lavash bread which make ridiculously beautiful garnishes for a piping hot soup. So go forth, America! Stop wasting your bread and start eating crispy delicious crostini! [With your nonexistent unexpected guests, of course].

Love,
Orlando