Making good croutons

My wife’s always telling me how we should eat more salads. A good idea, but how to make a good salad? There are many steps, but for Caesar salad, good croutons are necessary for a perfect experience. And to get good croutons, you have to make them yourself. So here’s how.

Ingredients you’ll need

• good-quality, fresh french bread
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 a teaspoon of salt
• one teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
• dried oregano or some herbal mix (1/2 a teaspoon or so)
• two garlic cloves

How to go about it

0. Preheat the oven. Preheat the oven to about 200-225 C. Cover a pan with a baking sheet.

1. Shape the bread. Cut the bread into approximately 1.5cm x 1.5cm cube-shaped pieces (all of the bread; no need to avoid pieces with crust) until you have some 8dl of them.

2. Make the butter mixture. Slice the garlic cloves lengthwise once (no smaller!). In a saucepan, combine the butter, garlic cloves, olive oil, the herbal mix and the salt & pepper. Heat until melted. Remove from heat, discard the garlic and let cool for 5-10 minutes.

3. Toss the croutons. You can’t just pour the butter mixture over the croutons, just like you can’t pour dressing over a Caesar salad. Instead, you “toss” it. Place the sauce at the bottom of a bowl, adding the croutons on top. Then manually lift the croutons at the bottom to the top (manually as in do it with your hands). Repeat until all sauce has been evenly absorbed by the croutons.

4. Bake the croutons. Spread the croutons evenly over a baking sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes at 225C until the croutons are golden-colored and crisp on the outside. Shake once or twice during baking.

And there you have them! I’m not really sure how long they’ll keep as they’re best used immediately after cooling down, but I would think a few days is fine.