I am always so happy for bread getting old. One day after, it is easier on my digestion. Two days after, even more so. Three days after, it has become too dry and stale to be enjoyed as it is and I will have to do something to it.

More than other ingredients, cooking with stale bread makes you feel good about yourself. Most ingredients are good as they are even if you wouldn’t do anything to them. You can make a salad, but the tomatoes, cucumbers, salad leaves and nuts do not need you to be enjoyed. With stale bread, it’s a different story, without you, it will be lost.

Lost bread brings out my creativity. When I’m lazy I can simply add it to a soup, giving it some body, nuttiness an heartiness. A bit of oil or butter and salt on top of the soup, or cheese and the bread has made your vegetable soup a fully comforting, nourishing meal.

Lost bread can be an appetizer, toasting it in the oven, then rubbed with a clove of garlic sliced open, topped with chopped tomatoes, olive oil and oregano. Or just the oil. Butter.

And of course dried bread is a very important ingredient to meat balls, giving them their bouncy juiciness, capturing the moisture inside while recovering some of its original gluten elasticity. And then there is still meat balls without meat: gnocchi, Knödel, dumplings.

But me, I like baking with stale bread, some eggs give it such a luring creaminess, like a cake, but more moist and more heartening, nourishing. And I like that the old bread gets the chance to bring out its ripened flavours, more intensely. The lost water, being replaced with a mixture of whatever you choose: water again, or milk, yoghurt, almond milk, infused with spices, salt, sugar, cocoa powder.

If you have a lot of stale bread and people to freed (though I suspect it would freeze well for later if you would be alone), you can make a full-blown bread pudding in the oven. If you just have a couple of slices, you can make pain perdu (or French toast as the English call it) in a frying pan. Pancakes, but more nourishing somehow, easier on my digestion. I guess for all the fermentation and ripening the bread has gone through by now.

Lost bread, one in a million, with cocoa powder and plums

Ingredients for two

Four slices of slightly dry rye bread (one day old (if sliced before as it dries out more quickly) or two-three days old)

One egg (if it’s just me, I often keep the other half of the egg for the next day or for something else completely, like for a one-person egg-lemon sauce in a chickend-rice soup. Of course you can simply make for two and save complete other half of the mixture combined for the next day too.)

Two tablespoons each of milk and water

One heaped teaspoon of cocoa powder (top photo). If adding, you may need to adjust the liquid quantity (adding a little more) as the cocoa powder will bind the mixture a bit like flour does.

A pinch of salt

Fresh plums: Reine Claude (a green round variety, photo above); Reine Victoria (photo below) (though grilled or as a compote would be great too, or Hugh Grant’s apricots soaked in honey from Notting Hill)

Tahini and lemon zest (above) or mint leaves (and cinnamon) (below)

Building bricks and suggestions for your very own version of the moment

Eggs: to bind, as the flour has lost some of its glueing properties having been “cooked” before with the bread baking.

Whatever stale bread you have and like: slightly dried out, so that it has become a bit dry to the touch, but you can still press it in. Take into account that bread will preserve longer if kept as a whole. If pre-sliced, it gets drier pretty quickly. Preferably pick a bread that is not too dense. I have often used tourte de seigle (a French rye bread) and though this is one of the denser breads and it does not get as springy as a country loaf or brioche would get, it soaks up the liquid without falling apart. However, denser still would be difficult I suspect. Also bread with a finer crumb and less elasticity (German style, fine air bubbles) is more difficult to work with in this case (make Knödel instead!), then bread with a more open crumb (French/Italian style, bigger air pockets, bouncing back more).

Liquid: water, milk, buttermilk, yoghurt. I often use a mix of water and milk.

Flavourings: cinnamon, cardamom, cocoa powder, rose or orange flower water, some sugar or any syrup (I prefer this on top rather than inside). If you want a little salt, though the bread will have some already

Fat too fry: I have already tried butter, olive oil, bacon fat, fat from the top of a pack of coconut milk. Butter and olive oil are the simplest and work well with most. If you would choose to bake in the oven and in some non-stick frying pans, you might even be able to leave it out if you prefer.

Toppings: fresh fruit, confiture, compote, sugar and cinnamon, syrup (any), pomegranate molasses, more butter, a dollop of creamy yoghurt, some honey and crunchy walnuts, tahini, lemon zest, orange zest, lavender, rose leaves, banana, date syrup and cured ham etc. etc.