I have what may sound like an odd question.
Have you ever left a french bread out in the open for a few days? You know how it basically gets hard as a rock?
Could this be done intentionally, then package the bread in plastic bags or whatever? I know you can somewhat reconstitute it by steaming it for a bit.
Just seems to me it might work.
The only thing about that is that the bread tastes stale. It undergoes some kind of chemical change sitting out.
You might try drying it out in a dehydrator, or in a gas oven with a pilot light, or by heating an oven, turning it off, and dehydrating your bread in that.
Granny, do you know?
Could this be done intentionally, then package the bread in plastic bags or whatever? I know you can somewhat reconstitute it by steaming it for a bit.<<<
This I have not tried.
I do not think that I would want to dry the loaf as a single piece.
You might dry bread slices, but how would you get it soft again? Steaming maybe.
I have worked in cafes that saved all the old bread and donuts and used them for bread puddings and dressing, in fact I have done the same.
LOL, my sister won’t eat my bread puddings, she found out it was old bread in them...and I thought that was the main reason to make them.
If I wanted a supply of bread, already baked, there is hard tack, some place in this thread is the recipe and also crackers, in the last week or so I posted several cracker recipes.
I think I also posted, some time back odd breads from India that were pretty well dried out, a flat bread, I remember reading the recipe.
Keep in mind that you can make corn bread batter, a little thinner than you do for baking and fry it, fantastic on a camp fire, fried in bacon drippings.
Yes, it is almost a pancake.
Biscuits can be fried also.
Do you have a dehydrator ? You could attempt drying a few slices of bread and see if you get a cracker that is edible.
If you using store bought bread, then beware, as I have noticed that the breads today have so much preservative in them that they almost do not spoil.
To prove my point, I left out samples and after a year the cinnamon roll in the individual wrapper, was soft enough to eat.