Years ago, our family had a favorite place that had Italian/American food and they were famous for their bread pudding, of all things. I don't think we ever ate there that we didn't order at least one piece and share it (it was served in huge slabs). Our daughter's favorite was chocolate chip bread pudding. They always had plain as well as another kind - blueberry, apple, peach, cinnamon/raisin, caramel nut, Vermont Maple Custard, molasses... You can serve it with a sauce, ice cream or whipped cream.

-Grainlady

Good luck with your new business! How exciting.

How about bread soup - I love tomato and bread soup. Bread crumbs for coating? Use it for stuffing? How about bread dumplings?

Or feed the birds!

I'd love to hear more about your new place.
AM

Here is a link that might be useful: Bread Dumplings

What about panzanella - Italian bread and vegetable salad? It is usually made with plain bread, but I think it would be good with all the breads you mentioned except for maybe the dark rye. This salad would be good in the growing season with fresh tomatoes and basil. A recipe follows.

In the soup months, what about soup specials featuring toasted bread hunks covered with cheese and the soup ladled over?

Another idea is to expand to meatballs in soup and meatball subs. Make your own meatballs including bread crumbs from your extra bread.

The strata is a good idea and what about macaroni and cheese "souffle" with buttered crumbs on top?

I would think a very large, heavy chef's knife (12-inch) might be the right knife to cut through those sandwiches.

Here is a link that might be useful: Panzanella

I agree, I think you need a large bladed knife with a smooth, sharp edge. I use a knife that I believe is intended for chopping vegetables for such things. A serrated knife just will not do.

Have you someplace locally that will sharpen knives? Our Hobby Lobby offers such a service. A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.

Good luck with your business!

A bakery we used to frequent when I was a kid offered a sheet of a very inexpensive spice cake with an orange frosting, made from "yesterday's rolls"..I don't know the recipe, but I'll bet there is one out there somewhere. I suspect they made a spice cake, to hide the fact that there was wheat, rye, cinnamon rolls etc in the mix. Baked it in a sheet cake pan, it was about 1 1/2 to 1 1/4 inches thick and sold in 4 inch squares or 4 by 12 inch slabs.
I will second the idea of an egg strata, it's a good use for bread odds and ends.
Also have you considered meat loaf? Slices in a sandwiches are wonderful! And lots of bread crumbs make a dense flavorful meatloaf that slices neatly when cold.
Good luck with your new venture.
Linda C

I would use a Santoku knife to cut the sandwiches. My BIL bought me one from Costco and it's my favorite knife. I've learned not to cut with a sawing motion but more of a rocking motion - it cuts much cleaner.
As for the bread maybe a savory bread pudding, or dry the bread put in a food processor add some dried spices and sell as home-made breadcrumbs (or you could use to bread chicken cutlets or pork chops).
Good Luck with your new place!

I've seen bags of bread cubes for sale.

The bread pudding sounds like a good idea!

Breads crumbs for meatballs. I love a good meatball sub with a great marinara sauce! Meatballs without bread crumbs & an egg are not as moist & tender, IMO.

Best wishes for a successful venture.

/tricia

Mande, there is/was a restaurant in Vancouver that made a breakfast muffin that was actually more like a bread pudding, baked in a large muffin tin. I loved them. They varied the favours by adding chopped apple, or cranberries or fresh raspberries, etc.. I'm thinking that you could make either a sweet one or a savory one. Bread puddings are easy to make.

Another option would be to grind the various bread crusts up to make bread crumbs. You could bread veal or chicken breasts and add a new sandwich to your menu.

As for a knife. I think that what you want is a long sharp knife that you just push down through the sandwich. Not a serrated knife. No sawing motion.

Ann

I agree with using a large very sharp knife and one assertive downward stroke through the sandwich for the best result. No sawing, no serrated bread knife. Use the bread knife if it's bread only you are slicing.

There some great ideas above for using up your bread bits. Since you are already making croutons you can bag them put a cute tag on them and sell them at the counter. Freshly made croutons will likely sell well. My kids eat them like crackers out of hand.

How about an electric knife at the grill for cutting paninis?
It could be a cordless one and simply pop it into the charger at night. An electric knife does a really good job on bread and is great for cutting a lot of sandwiches.

My kids used to love oven french toast. This recipe is similar:

Oven-Baked French Toast presented by Historic Sylvan Falls Mill Bed & Breakfast Email this page to a Friend

1 loaf French bread
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup margarine
2 tablespoons corn syrup
6 eggs
2 cups milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Place sugar, margarine and syrup in a small sauce pan and cook until syrupy; pour into a greased, 9" x 13" oven-proof dish.

Cut French bread into 3/4 inch slices and arrange into the oven-proof dish containing the syrupy mixture; set aside.

Blend together the eggs, milk and vanilla; pour over the French bread; cover and refrigerate overnight.

Bake uncovered at 350-375 degrees 40-45 minutes; serve with sausage or bacon.

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There are a lot of good ideas here, I especially like the breakfast french toast and bread pudding ideas. I love bread pudding and seldom make it.

My first thought was stuffing, but I don't know what the heck you would stuff in a sandwich shop, LOL.

As for the knife, I agree, ditch the serrated one. As the prior owner of a bar and grille, I mangled dozens of BLTs, with the vegetables falling out, the bacon snagging on the serrated blades. I got to the point where I hated them. Finally, one day, I grabbed the big chef's knife that I used to chop vegetables and cut it. I learned to bear down hard, but not "squish" the sandwich, and make that rocking motion. Much better.

Good luck in your new business.

Annie

I like the savory bread pudding idea. Cooked in individual, round terrines, they respond quite well to microwave reheating...remove from the terrine, cover with plastic wrap and zap 'til nicely warm and softened. Made with cheese & small chunks of meat (like the leftover ends from cold cuts that won't fit into the slicer?)they can be substantial enough to be a very nice and unusual special lunch offering. Bread puddings store well, even freeze well, so you can make large batches as long as you've the storage space.

In addition to meat loaf, you could make crab or fish cakes and serve them in a sandwich. Since most of your crumbs are stronger flavored breads, I'd probably stick with a strongly flavored fish...maybe smoked fish.

Thank you so much for your many suggestions. Some, such as the bread pudding, we had thought of but just aren't sure how well they would fit in to the menu as we don't really serve full hot meals, and most of the baked goods are taken out. The selling bags of croutons idea is so simple we should have thought of it. The spice cake lindac mentioned is very intriguing and I'll certainly do a search for it, or something adaptable. The Baked French Toast could easily be a Sunday morning breakfast special, possibly cubing the bread in large cubes and mixing the varieties (except dark rye), instead of slices. In discussing these great responses, we also thought the ham/egg strata muffins could be adapted to be similar to the ones Ann T mentioned by using sliced apples instead of the ham and cheese. The egg in the ham recipe has milk, dry mustard, worcestershire but for the apples we could use milk, vanilla and cinnamon, drizzling caramel sauce over after baking. All our muffins are baked in mini loaf pans, just to be a little different.

I can now see that that a non-serrated knife is the most suggested although I would have thought that this would cause the filling to squeeze out the side, but if the knife is sharp, I'm sure it would do a better job than what we have. We do have a couple of knives that would be worth getting sharpened. An electric knife may also do the trick. We offer veggie sandwiches and paninis which sometimes have so many vegetables in it that it is hard to keep together while cutting, especially after the bun is toasted. Our rueben panini is also difficult with the sauerkraut. Then there is also the training of the staff who are at times too timid to give the "one assertive downward stroke through the sandwich"

Our little cafe is located in Hope, BC, along the Trans-Canada highway, next to the busiest 24 hour gas station in the area (possibly the province). We get a lot of people come in where the passenger will pick up the food while the driver is gassing up the vehicle. The previous owner lives in Vancouver and admitted to not being interested in food, nor liking people. He also was a very poor businessman, who is a professor in another field. Why he purchased this place and owned it for a year, we have a no idea. He had a young girl running it that had worked here prior to him purchasing it. She opened and closed when she felt like it, so although there was a lot of traffic on the highway, she was seldom open and business was not great. We get many regular travelers of this highway now coming in surprised we are open, thinking that the place had been shut down for quite awhile. Even the local people are sometimes surprised, so we have a lot of marketing to do because once Fall comes we will have to depend on them more than now. We are already seeing more and more familiar faces saying "the last time we had . . ." or "See you on the way back". We have owned businesses for many years, but this is the first food establishment for us. We are making many changes, keeping the old ideas that work and are giving the place a face-lift (think 1960's Dairy Queen building with a few personalities since they moved a number of years ago). We have had many ideas on how to redecorate the dining room, but people are coming in saying how they really like what we did to the place, meanwhile we have done nothing yet. We are surrounded by mountains, with only the highway between us and the Fraser River, so the 180 degree view is great.

Well here it is almost midnight again and I started this response this morning, and then lunch hit. All the dishes are done (we picked up a new dishwasher today so hopefully not much longer doing them by hand), the floors are washed (I keep saying we should get a Roomba) so I'm off to home.

Once again thanks so much for your input into my questions. Should you ever be in the area, do stop in. We will have a website, we just haven't gotten that far - the list is long.

Mande

Good luck with your venture Mande. It's been quite a few years since I was in Hope, but I did travel through there by car with my family on the way up to visit friends in Oliver, B.C.

My daughter lives in Calgary and will be driving from there in the next days to catch the ferry in Vancouver over to Nanaimo.
She'll probably be looking for a nice place to stop for a bite so I'll tell her to look you up.

I'm sure you'll do well in that location!

SharonCb

Thanks SharonCB, and everyone else for the good wishes on this new project. We're finding that actually being open and serving freshly made food is making a big improvement on the daily sales.

We just moved from Airdrie, just north of Calgary. I've always been interested in your travels, being familiar with some of the places you go.

Mande

Our local Big M sells big bags of their "day old " breads-- just cubed & dried --labeled as "suffing mix".