Making French Soup Out of ‘French Toast’

Ingredients

• Consommé soup
• French bread
• Black pepper

This is month’s column is about using old bread to make a tasty soup. We usually preserve left-over bread in a plastic bag to keep it soft. But it can get moldy easily due to moisture, so, why not dry the bread?

If the weather is good, you just stick it on your backpack when you are hiking and it will dry on its own. Later, boil the hard, dried bread in soup broth. Pan Perdue, more commonly known as French toast, actually means “lost bread,” or “yesterday’s bread.” Eating up the whole loaf was a luxury in old times, and most people ate a loaf of bread over several days. Any leftover bread could be used in soup.

Directions

(1) Boil water and consommé soup stock together.

(2) Put dried bread into the soup. After the bread becomes soft, add black pepper.

I used consommé soup stock this time, but you can use any kind of soup including Japanese traditional miso. French bread is always best, but other kinds of bread is fine too. Just don’t use sweet Danish pastries, they don’t preserve well.

Boil the water and the consommé soup.

Insert dried French bread into the soup.

After the bread is soft, add black pepper.