recipes

How to Make Bread Cubes for Thanksgiving Stuffing

Sara {Go Gingham}

Bread cubes for stuffing Go Gingham

Why I’ve never done this before is beyond me. Every Thanksgiving, we make my husband’s most amazing Thanksgiving stuffing recipe. It’s the best! Every year, I pay up for the organic, fancy bread cubes.

Let’s not talk about how expensive these are at the store. I don’t like the huge list of ingredients that are in regular bread cubes so we’ve been going with the organic the last few years.

Best part of this? Bread that’s about to go bad is getting used so no food waste!

Bread cubes for Thanksgiving Go Gingham The bread cubes are good but really – it’s stale bread that the bakery department hasn’t sold. Since I have organic bread that goes stale (Remember how the quilt + my son went to college? Less bread is getting eaten here.) and I have an oven, I now have fancy bread cubes. You’re about to, also.

Bread for cubes Go Gingham

These couldn’t be easier to make! Turn them into croutons easily by brushing the bread with olive oil, place on baking sheet, and sprinkle with spices.

How to Make Bread Cubes for Thanksgiving Stuffing
Recipe Type: Main
Cuisine: American
Author: Sara Tetreault
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4-6
Don’t toss out bread that’s about to go stale – make these cubes for stuffing. Easy to use these as croutons or in an egg strata dish.
Ingredients
  • 8-12 slices of bread (I keep ends/heels of bread stashed in the freezer to use for this)
Instructions
  1. Set oven to 275 degrees.
  2. Cut bread into 1″ x 1″ squares. Smaller or larger is fine, too.
  3. Place on a baking sheet and make sure single layer. I use an 11″ x 14″ jelly roll pan.
  4. Bake for 30 minutes.
Notes
Remember the bread shrinks in the oven so if your recipe calls for 4 cups, cut up 5 cups of bread crumbs.[br]Stash your heels of bread that nobody wants to eat in the freezer and then make these.

So tasty and bread is getting used not wasted.

Cubed bread Thanksgiving Go Gingham

Bread that’s ready to get stale or worse – grow hair and get moldy – can be useful. It makes excellent bread cubes for stuffing, croutons for a fresh green salad, or you can skip putting them in the oven and make this egg strata with them instead.

Christmas Morning Strata with Bread Cubes Go Gingham

It’s our Christmas morning tradition but you can make it anytime.

Don’t toss out bread and don’t buy fancy-dancy bread cubes from the store. Make your own. It’s so easy!

What Thanksgiving stuffing are you making? Do you have a holiday stuffing tradition?

Go Gingham related links:

Oyster and sausage stuffing for Thanksgiving – it’s the best!
Celebrate Thanksgiving more simply and enjoy the holidays more
Grilled Thanksgiving turkey from two years ago
Cloth napkins for Thanksgiving that are made from an old skirt
A Thanksgiving tablecloth made with quilting techniques

Published by Sara {Go Gingham}

Sara, creator of Go Gingham, writes about real food, green living, and a healthy lifestyle - on fewer resources - {Stylishly Frugal Living}. She loves gingham - but tries to keep that in check.

5 thoughts on “How to Make Bread Cubes for Thanksgiving Stuffing”

  1. I keep all our bread in the freezer and take out the quantity we need when we need it. With sliced bread, it’s easy to separate a few slices, and they defrost really quickly when set out on a plate (I know you don’t have a microwave). With bakery bread that’s not pre-sliced, I will divide the loaf into the quantity we need for one meal and freeze it in sections like that. This means we NEVER have stale bread in our house! When it comes to making stuffing for Thanksgiving, I just use bread from the freezer (because I never seem to remember to take out bread for stuffing a few days before Thanksgiving). My stuffing recipe is my MIL’s and it doesn’t call for the bread to be pre-baked in the oven. We think it tastes just fine (even with my using “fresh” bread) but it’s quite possible Grandma’s is better (because I know she uses stale bread), and I have to admit it’s also possible that we’ve just never tasted a really good stuffing before, and that mine is actually terrible!

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    1. Marian,
      Bless you for remembering we don’t have a microwave! 🙂
      Great, great tips and I love the dedication to ‘no food waste’ that you have.
      BTW, I have a feeling that your stuffing is quite tasty.
      Thanks so much for writing and happy holidays to you and your family!! xo

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  2. I’ll have to let my MIL know your trick so she can do it for us. Ha! Actually, I usually bring my home-baked bread for Thanksgiving and that had better not end up as dressing!!!!!!!!!!! I refuse to go to that much work just for it to become stale.

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    1. Oh yum on that home baked bread!
      Enjoy the holidays with your family. You MIL is a dear.
      Thanks for writing in ~
      🙂
      ps maybe you should share your bread recipe/techniques with Go Gingham readers!!

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      1. I have a couple of different bread recipes that I have used. One is easy-peasy and quick to pull off–the recipe calls for adding herbs, but I typically leave those out, as they intensify in flavor and it can get overwhelming. The other one is a Russian potato bread recipe which is more of a rustic style bread–it reminds me of something from a bakery, but if you aren’t familiar with bread-making, it would be frustrating to learn on this loaf, as the dough requires a lot of muscles and time to knead. LMK if you are interested in either one.

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