How To Make Breadcrumbs Without A Food Processor

🌟 About This Recipe

• Making breadcrumbs is a great way to reduce food waste by using leftover bread, dinner rolls, or crust offcuts instead of throwing them in the bin.
• Breadcrumbs are fast to make and store very well.

🥘 Ingredients

Please note that below is a guide for some of the ingredients we used in the recipe. The printable recipe further down the page has the complete list of ingredients, including quantities and step-by-step instructions.

Bread - you can use sliced, unsliced, or buns. It can be fresh or stale bread, but it should not be moldy. 

🍳 Instructions

Step 1 - Cut the bread into small pieces. The smaller the better because they will dry out quicker and are easier to crush.

If using leftover buns or unsliced bread, first slice these into pieces that are about the same thickness as sliced bread before cutting into cubes.

Spread the cubes in an even single layer on one or two rimmed baking sheets.

Step 2 - Place bread into a preheated oven and bake for 20 - 30 minutes - or until the bread cubes feel dry and crumble when crushed. Remove from the oven, leave on the trays to cool.

Step 3 - Place the bread onto a shallow container, working in batches, press down on the dried bread with the base of a bottle or tin, crushing the pieces using a twisting and rocking action until you have fine crumbs. Transfer the crumbs to an airtight container as each batch is completed, seal and store.

💭 Recipe Tips

If using leftover buns, first slice these into pieces that are the same thickness as sliced bread before cutting into cubes.

Other Ways to Make Breadcrumbs Without A Food Processor

Our preferred method - Is to transfer the crumbs to a ceramic bowl and crush them by pressing down on them with something that has a flat base, like a thick glass jar or something similar.

If you have cut the bread into tiny pieces and dried them correctly, it will take little effort on your part to make the crumbs.

• Note: When crushing the breadcrumbs, avoid crushing them on your baking sheets because the hard crumbs are abrasive and can ruin them.
  
  And don't crush using the lid side of a jar because the paint will come off and go into your crumbs - see the picture below of my first batch of crumbs where I used the lid side and not the base.

Ziplock bag - If you wanted to, you could crush the crumbs in a ziplock bag and use a rolling pin or mallet, but I've found that this is not always a good idea because the dried bread cubes have hard and sharp edges that eventually end up cutting through the plastic. 

Use your hands - If you have a small amount to make, you can use your hands to crush the dried bread into crumbs, but it can be rough on the hands. 

Box grater - To be honest, we haven't tried this method but would imagine it to get quite messy with crumbs going all over the place, and you would need to use big pieces of oven toasted bread instead of the cubes like in our recipe. 

Other kitchen gadgets - if you have an electric spice grinder or blender you could use those to make breadcrumbs.

🌡️ Storage

Store breadcrumbs in an airtight container or a zip lock bag with the air squeezed out.

They can be stored in the fridge for up to one month or frozen for up to three.

Frozen breadcrumbs take very little time to thaw and can be used straight from the freezer.

📝 FAQ

🍞 More Bread Recipes

• Cob bread
• Hawaiian dinner rolls
• Apple cinnamon rolls
• Sweet dinner rolls

I hope you find the post on How to make breadcrumbs without a food processor helpful. If you do, please leave a comment below because I would love to know.

You might also like our Panko breadcrumb recipe and how to make bread crumbs with using a food processor.