For women readers - How to avoid waste

THERE is always and end to every loaf and alas! in many homes these valuable pieces of bread are wasted.

“We don’t like crusts”, “We don’t like stale bread”, “What can you do with it but throw it away?” are the comments we hear about loaf ends. To begin with, we can avoid a lot of waste by organising our bread buying and not buying a loaf unless we really need it.

Again, let us make it a rule never to cut a new loaf until the old one is finished. Let us remember, too, that bread a day or two old is not stale bread. If pieces of bread are unavoidably left over, let us turn them to good advantage. They will help us with some of our catering problems.

For breakfast

Sometimes it is not possible to spare points for a breakfast cereal for the children. Make them wheatmealies instead.

Cut any left-over pieces of bread into neat dice, really tiny dice. Spread them on a flat tin and bake until quite crisp when the oven is lighted for other cooking. When cool, store in a tin. Serve just as you would a cereal. Put some of the wheatmealies into a porridge plate and add milk and sugar, or just stewed apples or plums.

For the biscuit tin

Instead of worrying about getting plain biscuits, make bread biscuits, a savoury one to go with soup, etc, a sweet one with tea.

Cut the left-over pieces of bread into thin slices, then into rounds, fingers or triangles. Brush some with a very little melted margarine or milk and sprinkle with grated dry cheese, or gravy powder, celery, salt and plain salt and pepper. Brush others with sweetened milk and cocoa, or milk flavoured with vanilla. Spread the biscuits on tins and bake in a moderate oven until crisp. When cool, store in tins.

Don’t queue for baby’s rusks. Make some. For these, cut the pieces of bread into thick, short pieces and lay them as before on baking trays. Bake in a cool oven until they are crisp, then quickly split open each piece and put back again into the oven to cool off. Baby will love these to nibble.