Stone hard stale bread

One of our guests this weekend bought a lovely huge loaf of bread. It was delicious while it lasted, chewy on the outside, soft and tasty on the inside. But due to all of us forgetting about it while in a rush to head out the door, it's gone hard. I mean really hard, the I-need-a-chainsaw-to-slice-a-piece hard.

Anything I can still use it for that are edible? It'll make a great doorstop or large paperweight otherwise.

bread and butter pudding?

Knodel?
chopped up (with a chain saw?) and mixed in with hamburger meat (soaked in milk first perhaps) for fleischpflanzele
semmelbrösel for schnitzel
throwing at cats (mine just jumped on the computer)
isn't there a bread pudding dish of some sort ?

throw it to the birds, its raining today so it will soften up

Create breadcrumbs?

Sorry couldn't resist!

Homemade Croutons - cut into small cubes, cover in butter and desired herbs, broil in oven until crispy...yummy on salads and in soups.

Croutons...a little olive oil and some spices should do it...OH! Only right after you take the chainsaw to it

Edit: a second too late!!! dammit!

Bring it to the Wiesn and use it as a weapon.

if you have a husband you could throw it at him, just for fun of course

Run it under the tap, stick it in a pre-warmed (about 50-100°C) oven for about 10mins and it might soften up.
You can only do that once though.

Keydeck, I already have 2 weapons of Maß Distraction. A loaf of bread wouldn't make much difference.

Stuff it down someone's toilet ? But that might not be using your loaf if that person is important.

how about a book end or a door stop ?

Cut the bread up into small squares, `bout 1 inch or so,
take a bunch of paprika, tomatoes, black olives a bit of parsley, red onions salt+pepper, olive oil, balsamico. Mix all the veggies together and just before serving the oil and balsamico and the rest. Viola Toscana Bread Salat. Yoü can also add a bit of garlic or use chilli olive oil.

There is some italian soup thang that made from stale bread. Basically a tomato/onion soup with shitloads of olive oil and lumps of stale bread in it. I think its called pappa al pomodoro or something like that.
Its basically some chopped onion and garlic softened up in olive oil, a load of decent tomatoes (or a tin of tomatoes) thrown in, cooked down for 1o minutes or so, then you add stale bread and some liquid (stock, water), and cook it out for a bit on a low, low heat. Glug in some oil, shred some basil leaves and add the, season, and eat.
Its so simple, that its obviously reliant on good ingredients, but if the bread was good, should be OK.

You can make what I know to be called "Bundash" (Hungarian).
You slice the bread in normal slices, then dip it in milk a bit, then dip it in raw egg (like you would do with a schnitzel) and fry it.
You can add sugar or salt.
Its good even when it gets cold, and its really simple to prepare.

@ the LSB - add sugar and cinnamin to the whipped egg and you have what we Southerners call "French Toast"...top with powdered sugar and more cinnamin if you like...mmmm...yummy...I'm going to make some for breakfast this weekend.

We are way less inventive in Blighty. We call it "eggy bread".

Kaiser Schmarrn.

Yummy!

I think the problem here is that the bread it an entire loaf and already hard -- so it cannot be well sliced or cut into bits or even ground up for bread crumbs. Your best bet at this stage: bread pudding. Put the whole loaf in some big pot with lots of milk and let it soak until it's soft enough to cut up and then proceed normally. There are lots of nice bread soups too where you'd soak the bread in water first.

Stuff to do with old bread

bread pudding
bread casserole
Semmelknödel
gazpacho, red or white ( http://uk.almondsarein.com/recipes/ajo_blanco.htm -- white one with garlic and almonds garnished with grapes)
other bread soups -- look for recipes with google / epicurious
stick it in other soups
make croutons
soak bread in water or milk just to soften it up enough to puree it for... dunno
welsh rabbit
french toast
and a New Year's resolution: slice all bread before it gets too hard

I hope you mean Welsh rarebit!!
EDIT : apparently you can say rabbit too. There's one joke which fell flat on its face!

some people call it that, yes, but not everyone does. Depends on what cookbook you grew up with.

http://www.answers.com/welsh+rarebit&r=67
http://www.answers.com/welsh+rabbit&r=67


Edit: ah, you edited. Very good.

As Gen pointed out, one of the main problems was that it was in a big chunk. But I managed to saw a smaller hunk off of it and let it soak in chicken/vegetable broth. Once it was soft, I tore it up into bite-sized pieces, then heated it up and added a Weissbier. Boiled it, added a fair assortment of spices and about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard and it made a nice soup. I would have done something nicer with it, but the cupboards were bare of all but condiments and spices. Not even a tin of tomatoes, to my shame.

just found a new use...

[img]http://www.rca.ac.uk/show2000/jpegs/debeljevic.jpg[/img]

http://www.rca.ac.uk/show2000/designprod/debeljevic/