All of us who bake bread as a hobby encounter this issue on a regular basis. We all knows how delicious freshly baked bread is. But we also know how boring it can be after a few days.
You better just realize it. Sustainability is clearly limited compared to much industrial baked bread.
Now, I don’t think that has to be anything negative. It’s worth thinking about why those loaves you buy in the store can stay fresh for so much longer. Maybe we don’t want to now the answer.
But still, all these dry pieces of various types of bread in the pantry is a bit depressing for me.
Just throw them away, you may say. But I have a problem with that.

OK, if it starts to grow green or white fluffy things on it, I suppose there are now other solution. But to throw away food that is still useful seems unethical.
There are so many people in the poorer parts of the world that are struggling to get enough food for the day. Meanwhile, we in the richer parts of the world are throwing away tons of still useful food. We have to realize that it’s somewhat arrogant.
But to sit and chew on a piece of stale bread of principle reasons is probably not the solution. It will only end with you giving up, and stop baking bread.
No, here you have to be creative. Because of course, there are solutions.
Here comes a few of them.

1. BRUSCHETTA

I claim that Bruschetta is a small miracle. That something so simple can be so good, has to be a godsend.
Cut a few slices of your leftover sourdough bread. It should be ciabatta, and if you have that it’s fine. Otherwise don’t care too much about that. All white bread of good quality will do.
Fry them in a little olive oil until they are golden brown on both sides, and let dem drain on paper towels. Core and chop some tomatoes and mix them with finely chopped basil, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Top the slices with the tomato mixture. Ready.
Think of it as summer on toast.

I remember in the past when the restaurants here in Sweden was able to put a basket with toast bread of dubious quality on the table to the food. And get away with it. After all, no one ate it.
Bread has been a sad story here in Sweden for decades. Its primary purpose was to have something to put the topping on. It was nothing you ate at the restaurant. You could be filled up and not be able to eat enough of all the other delicious food. Not so strange that the restaurants served the cheapest crap they could find.

As a matter of fact, I don’t understand why they bothered putting any bread at the table at all. I suppose it had something to do with traditions from the rest of Europe. There, you were always served bread with your meal. The difference was that you were never served toast bread if it was not breakfast you were eating. You expected a tasty bread with your meal in these parts of Europe.
But not here in Sweden. Here we were chewing our syrup bread with prickigkorv. Now, the syrup bread is maybe not so bad. But you probably have to be Swedish to like prickigkorv. Consider a salami of inferior quality with a very loose texture.