What do you do with bread heels?

Heels from regular loaf bread, baguettes, sourdough or sweet bread, or some of the heavy Artisan breads? I dislike bread heels of any type. Gene likes them, even if I make French Toast using heels....he is OK with it. So, I usually freeze what I need to, packaging the same types together, and when called for I make bread crumbs. I've tried making croûtons with them....don't care for that too much. When they have been in the freezer long enough, I throw a few out for the birds...they are not fussy, and what they don't take, Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel have lunch.

I usually go most Fridays to Don Giovannis a local restaurant. It's an all guy thing and we usually have the same waiter each week who knowing what we like always brings a whole plate of just bread heels. It saves an arguement and bread grabbing quarrel.

If I can get 'em before True Love eats 'em, I make bread crumbs.

OK ... I'll fall for it. What are bread heels?

They are the best for toasting, rubbing with garlic, drizzling with olive oil and having almost any hot soup poured over them.

Heels are the end slices from a loaf of bread.

OK ... I'll fall for it. What are bread heels?

Hi Peter, they are the end cuts of most bread types that are totally crust.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whats-the-point-of-the-Heel-of-a-loaf-of-bread-Nobody-ever-eats-it-/350209513332?sk=photos

Thanks. Never heard the expression before, though I can see the reasoning behind the name on a baguette or similar shaped bread.

Ordinary 'tin' loaves the end slices are known to me as the crusts and when I was young children were told to eat up the crusts because it would give them curly hair.

Which I now recognise as a cynical ploy from adults who themselves didn't want to eat them.

Crusts on tin loafs - the first one I keep next to the open slic eto keep the rest of the bread fresh. When the loaf is finished then the two crusts go in the compostt bin. Baguettes and similaar? If hungry we eat them.

My partner loves the ends. He'd be happy if the bread could somehow magically have 4 of them.

The best breakfasts from a loaf of bread have toasted crusts with peanut butter on them.

I'm curious about regional usage of heel v. crust. I grew up eating crusts in suburban New Jersey.

[Jenise]

I'm with your partner, Jeff. Love the heels (grew up in California, Jim C, and that's what everybody I knew called them. Didn't hear the term 'crusts' until this thread.) Btw, good to see you, I got to worrying yesterday that we hadn't seen you in a long time and was going to shoot off an email today to make sure you were okay!

I was going to say..toasted crusts with Nutella.
-Shaji

Jenise said:

I'm with your partner, Jeff. Love the heels (grew up in California, Jim C, and that's what everybody I knew called them. Didn't hear the term 'crusts' until this thread.) Btw, good to see you, I got to worrying yesterday that we hadn't seen you in a long time and was going to shoot off an email today to make sure you were okay!

I was internet-deprived for about a week. Pam made me go on a business trip with her, and the 250-year-old farmhouse outside Bordeaux we stayed in had no internet...

I did get in it with Alan from Paris though.

I just eat them like the rest of the loaf. Not that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Another way to enjoy bread.

Hey now, I like the idea of toasted heels with Nutella...humm. Just gave the birds some Hawaiian Sweet Bread heels, those would have been great toasted and spread with Nutella. Dang!
Speaking of Hawaiian Sweet Bread...I have not bought any in a long time and was so disappointed in this last loaf. It is no longer the yellow I recall, nor did it have the great sweet taste it used to have. What's up with that?

Chiming in with Jenise, I'm another West Coaster who never heard the term "crusts" before this thread. My definition of "heel" in this context differs somewhat from Karen's: I think of that term applying strictly to bread cooked in a pan, as in sandwich bread. In other words, to me Wonder Bread (another term that will be lost on some - cheap white sandwich bread popular in the US in the 60's, may or may not still exist) has a heel but a baguette just has an end. I can understand people not liking Wonder Bread heels but then Wonder Bread is/was disgusting anyway and decidedly not about crust in the first place. I'm with those who have no objection at all to the ends of artisan bread of elongated shapes. Crust is delicious part of what good bread is about and I think a piece blessed with more of it is a delicacy, not a throw-away. Heck, a baguette is designed to have just about as much crust as possible.

As with Mark and Jenise, I grew up calling the end of the bread loaf the heel. To us, the crust was the dark part at the edge of each slice of bread and the heels were the two pieces in each loaf in which one surface consisted entirely of crust. We never had a baguette in the house, so we never had to worry about what to call their ends.

Southerner here, we said heels (or possibily just ends). Never heard of crusts (South or NY).

New Yorker here. Never heard "heels" till this thread. Always called the end of the bread "the end".

Btw, good to see you, I got to worrying yesterday that we hadn't seen you in a long time and was going to shoot off an email today to make sure you were okay!

Thank you for noticing. And, thank you for the welcome back. Jim and I were on vacation for 3 weeks in Moscow and St Petersburg -- no computer -- so that's why the gap.

3 weeks in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Nice. How was it gastronomically?

3 weeks in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Nice. How was it gastronomically?

We made every effort to eat traditional Russian food (I can get pasta and sushi at home!). Russian cuisine is somewhat schizophrenic: on the one hand, there are dumplings and pickled vegetables; on the other hand, there are sturgeon and Stroganoff.

One of the most reliable foods is the bread, brown and dense and often augmented with sunflower seeds or hazelnuts.

Another big influence is that Russia, and the Soviet Union even moreso, is a big place. We also ate at Georgian, Azeri, and Armenian restaurants. These three cuisines are somewhat similar to each other -- kebabs, pilafs, roasted and/or stuffed vegetables, hearty soups -- but there are a few charismatic dishes, too: chicken satsivi, Khinkali, pork loin with pistachio.

So, Brillat-Savarin has nothing to worry about from Babushka. But, that said, I can enjoy a peasant cuisine for many nights in a row whereas fussy food will tax my patience after only a couple of days.

Wine addendum: Wine was prohibitively expensive there so we drank very little. We had a bit of Chablis and a Rose Cabernet d'Anjou. And Soviet champagne!

There were no American wines on any list, though I did see Chilean and Argentinian. Old prejudices die hard, I suppose.

We mostly drank soft drinks (esp. mors, a cranberry-type juice), beer, or had cocktails.

New Yorker here. Never heard "heels" till this thread. Always called the end of the bread "the end".

What? That is just too logical!

We made every effort to eat traditional Russian food (I can get pasta and sushi at home!). Russian cuisine is somewhat schizophrenic: on the one hand, there are dumplings and pickled vegetables; on the other hand, there are sturgeon and Stroganoff.

One of the most reliable foods is the bread, brown and dense and often augmented with sunflower seeds or hazelnuts.

Another big influence is that Russia, and the Soviet Union even moreso, is a big place. We also ate at Georgian, Azeri, and Armenian restaurants. These three cuisines are somewhat similar to each other -- kebabs, pilafs, roasted and/or stuffed vegetables, hearty soups -- but there are a few charismatic dishes, too: chicken satsivi, Khinkali, pork loin with pistachio.

So, Brillat-Savarin has nothing to worry about from Babushka. But, that said, I can enjoy a peasant cuisine for many nights in a row whereas fussy food will tax my patience after only a couple of days.

Sounds about what I would have expected. I've never been particularly excited about Russia for culinary reasons. But it's always fun to be someplace else and eat something different, for a little while. It livens up the senses. Plus I'm sure it was an amazing trip for other reasons.