Don't Throw Out Stale Bread. Here's How To Use It To Thicken Soup

Nothing beats a warm loaf of bread, fresh out of the oven. Unfortunately, after that same bread has sat out on the counter for a day or two, it loses much of its charm. But you don't need to throw out the stale end of the loaf. Instead, bypass the garbage bin and toss it right into your soup pot. Stale bread is actually one of the best ingredients for thickening homemade soup, and there are a few different ways that you can do it.

One method is to blitz the stale bread into breadcrumbs and stir those into your soup pot. Or, if you're making a blended soup, try just tossing some hunks of bread in and letting them soak in the broth for a while before puréeing. Simmering in the warm liquid will soften the bread enough that it totally disintegrates when you hit it with the immersion blender. There are even a few soups that are traditionally built around being thickened with bread.

Ribollita is the perfect way to use up stale bread, as it's an Italian soup in which pieces of bread can simply be tossed into the pot and allowed to simmer until they break down and turn the soup thick and hearty. Bread is also the secret thickening ingredient in gazpacho, generally soaked in water and then wrung out before it is puréed with the fresh vegetables. You can use just about any stale bread for thickening soups, but avoid anything moldy. Also, be mindful of the effect that stronger-flavored breads (like rye or sourdough) will have before you add them to the pot.

Food waste is a huge problem in modern kitchens. With all of the abundance that we have, it is easy to forget the techniques that frugal cooks used to keep from throwing anything out. Soups are a classic dish for using up whatever meat and vegetable scraps were on hand, and thickening them can be a great way to use up extra bits of starch as well.

It is the starch in stale bread that helps give soup that creamy, delicious thickness, and there are many other sources of starch in your kitchen. If you have a wrinkly potato in the back of the cabinet that's no longer pretty enough to bake, peel it, dice it up, and simmer it in the soup. As it cooks, it will release starch and give you a creamy soup without needing to add dairy. The same works with leftover plain oatmeal or a cardboard box half-full of rice from your Chinese takeout the other night. And if you want it extra creamy, simmer the starch for a while and then purée it in.

If you happen to be on the sourdough train, you surely already know a few ways to use your sourdough discard. But perhaps it has not yet occurred to you that you can also use sourdough discard to thicken soups. All you have to do is add some discard to a bowl, spoon in a bit of hot broth, and mix it to a nice slurry. Stir that back into the pot and let it cook for a little bit, and all of the starch from the flour will gelatinize and thicken things right up — plus it'll add a little zing of sourdough flavor.