I let it dry for a few hours even though I'm not putting it in the bird. Otherwise I'd let it dry overnight. You just adjust the broth to the dryness of the stuffing.

I seldom make a whole turkey these days and casserole stuffing isn't as good, but I recently discovered that adding egg provides the texture of inside the bird stuffing. I usually make enough stuffing for four generous servings and don't even use a whole egg--just enough to help bind it.

Most from scratch stuffing recipes I've seen say to use fresh bread, cut into cubes, spread the cubes on baking sheets, and dry the bread thoroughly in an oven at a lowish temperature.

Here's an example from a respected source. It notes that the practice of leaving bread out to dry doesn't work well and also causes the bread to get stale.

Serious Eats - how to dry bread for stuffing

I think eggs are always included in bread stuffing recipes. I also recall that the practice of putting stuffing inside the turkey was first discouraged decades ago, because it was found that the damp mass prevents parts of the inside of the turkey from getting to a safe temperature. If you want poultry flavor in the stuffing, be sure use a recipe that calls for good chicken broth to be used for the liquid.

I usually make matzah stuffing, since my experience roasting turkeys is for Passover. So on the odd occasion that I make bread stuffing, like this year, it'll be dry, by analogy. Some of the how depends on your environment. If you have humidity, which a lot of kitchens do, it probably does work better to oven dry. I've never had a problem with air drying.

Yes to eggs and stock.

I dry mine out in the oven, as Elmer mentioned. I used to dry it out on the counter, but just dont have that kind of patience anymore.

I have never made stuffing without drying the bread first, so I can’t attest to the difference. But interestingly, the recipe I’ve used for years (which we all love) does not call for eggs.

We make a cornbread dressing, but even the corn bread is room-dried at least a day before joining other ingredients. Sandwich bread goes into the mix as well. We have air dried it, oven dried it, and even put it through the toaster. I don't recommend that last method.

We use a recipe from Cooks Illustrated but I'm away from where I keep it. I found the following one from a search. It sources it to an America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Same entity as Cooks Illustrated and it looks familiar. We add two rogue ingredients - sliced mushrooms and roughly chopped dried sweet cherries. We use egg bread sold by Trader Joes.

The end result is VERY good.

Traditional Stuffing recipe

I forgot to mention I've taken to making the stuffing balls the last couple of years, rather than cooking in the bird. Would that make a difference? The recipe Elmer linked to cooks it in a pan, so I suppose if dried/dryish works for that it would work for the balls - ?

My recipe has egg but no broth; milk if needed to moisten.

ETA: YES to the addition of mushrooms! I use a mix of fresh white or bella mushrooms and dried porcini (soaked first, of course).

It can't absorb all the flavors you want it to if it's not dry. How it gets dry depends on the timing. I prefer to dry mine using the toaster or the oven. That way it doesn't get stale. I made my Thanksgiving stuffing a few days ago. It's now in the freezer. The only way it's any good at all is cooked in the bird but turkey is so boring we like ours smoked for Thanksgiving. DH will spatchcock and grill it. This way I am ahead of the game for gravy and stuffing!!

Stuffing balls are how I discovered that egg makes a difference. I never used a recipe for stuffing but I did for stuffing balls and it called for egg. You probably don't need to add much broth if it's going inside the bird. I use enough broth to make it a little wetter than what I want the final result to be when I plan to bake it outside of the bird. I also like to add chopped apple, which also provides moisture.

Always dried out bread, never fresh - unless you prefer a very wet, mushy result. Dry definitely holds its shape better.

I also prefer to bake it in a well buttered pan to get that crispy top and edges.

I like chopped apple in ours too - and chestnuts.

I dry my bread in the oven and my dressing does have eggs and broth. If you don't dry the bread first it has a gooey, gummy texture.

I'm the outlier here, I never dry the bread. My recipe also has eggs and broth. I don't like stuffing very much as it mostly resembles greasy bread to me but my family likes it very moist, right on the edge of goopy, so that works for us. If we wanted drier stiffing I think drying the bread would probably help.

I do make cornbread dressing as well, as my husband is southern and I have a celiac daughter. I will make the cornbread a couple of days in advance and let it dry out a little before using it, but it doesn't go into the bird, it's dressing and not stuffing.

Annie

I never dry out the bread or cornbread either. I make like my grandmother and it is a big pan of oyster cornbread dressing (not stuffing) with a couple of slices of bread to give a bit of texture.

I dry it too. I find that most supermarket breads are too wet otherwise. I make the cornbread myself, and I dry that out too. Both of them in the oven on a very low temp. I think it's worth the extra step.

Except for using all bread and the addition of thyme and marjoram, Elmer’s recipe is almost identical to the one we use (loosely) to make cornbred dressing. All my relatives I learned from used day-old cornbread plus a couple of crumbled day-old biscuits.

Another slight change over the years is that most of us now do half sage and half poultry seasoning til it tastes ’right’. We always take the ’innards’ (you know, that little bag that contains what most people throw away), cover with water and bring to a slow boil with a little S&P and use it for at least part of the seasoning stock and/or homemade turkey gravy.

My mother always made a home roasted turkey with bread stuffing for our large family.

Simple Yankee bread stuffing — nothing weird ;)

The white bread was good quality — no squish bread. Thickish slices.

DH makes it now. It is cooked inside the turkey. Be careful not to overfill. That would make any stuffing gloppy.

Ingredients:

Egg

Onion, small

Celery, 2 or 3 sticks

Butter 2T

Belles Seasoning

Salt & pepper

Thick white Pepperidge farm bread slices 4 —> 6, dried in oven

Cut dried bread into 1 1/2 inch squares. Add chopped celery & onion. Add about 2T Belles and stir together.Add whipped egg & stir. Add melted butter & stir. Add salt & ground pepper; stir.

Put the mix inside turkey cavity.

Use less bread for smaller bird.

He puts the stuffing in the main cavity as well as the other end. He closes the cavity with poultry pins and all cotton cooking twine.

His roasted turkeys are always wonderful. Simple northern US roasted turkey. Petite pois peas, Whipped potato, cranberry sauce from whole cranberries, home made pan gravy. He makes broth on the back burner from the gizzard, heart, neck, halved onion, spring water. He uses this broth and the pan drippings (with flour) to make a delicious gravy.

He’s a good cook.

I didn't make bread this week because of my little injury, so we got some from TJ's. There are still a few makers of traditional California sourdough bread, but TJ's didn't hire them. Such meh bread! I'll bake tomorrow. Half this loaf has gone into the freezer for the stuffing. (Called stuffing hereabouts whether made in bird or dish.)

^^ HA! Yea, on my to-do list for the weekend before Thanksgiving is a couple loaves of challah for the bread pudding and some sort of bread for the stuffing but I haven't decided which yet.

I like soft, airy bread. Usually a cheap store brand. Then dry it out for several days in my pantry with the door closed, then dice into half inch cubes. Challah would be perfect!!!!! LOVE Challah!

An underlying attitude in a few responses that I suspect could suggest broader applicability to things other than bread for stuffing:

I never dry bread.......

and not

I've never tried to dry bread.......

Closed- versus open-minded maybe? If you haven't tried it, why not try it? It's easy enough to do and you may like the result better.

I use several different kinds of bread in stuffing, but my challah would just melt. :)

Speaking of Bread Pudding. There is an excellent recipe in a Williams Sonoma dessert cookbook I have. I’ve made it a few times. I used a sort of high end sliced quasi wheat bread. Easy and delicious. Not just a ho hum bread pudding.

I buy fresh thyme, sage and rosemary at a local store that sells it in bulk at Thanksgiving. I just use a few sprigs of each. I simmer the turkey neck with the herbs for an hour and use it for my stuffing and gravy, along with chopped herbs in the stuffing.

" my challah would just melt. "

Are you talking about bread you baked yourself?

Is this description positive or negative?

I have made it both with freshish bread or with somewhat dried but never with oven dried. I don't care for cubes but prefer crumbled.. No sweetish breads and definitely no fruit additions. Savory only.I do like mushrooms added and have had it made with sausage and quite enjoyed that but never add it to mine.

Several years ago I started cooking it in the crockpot and love the results. I don’t care for it cooked in a baking dish because I dislike it getting any crispy bits. I like the texture to be as if it were cooked inside the bird.

Yes, baked by me. A positive for challah for the Sabbath. A negative for using in stuffing or bread pudding. A certain kind of commercial kosher challah is pretty tough, however.

If you have access to Trader Joes, make a small batch with their egg bread as a test. See what you think.

Years ago, I think it was Test Kitchen, had a segment about day old or air dried bread versus oven, heat dried bread. The end product was not the same.

Long time ago, but I seem to recall that one method created a crystaline structure that….below:

Edited.

Science

Why Dry Bread and Stale Bread Aren’t the Same Thing

Stale bread and bread dried in the oven are both hard. But don’t be fooled into thinking they’re interchangeable.

Save
🔹 https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/1941-why-dry-bread-and-stale-bread-aren-t-the-same-thing

”Takeaway

Stale bread may feel firm and dry, but it has hidden reserves of water. Its firmness is the result of a process known as retrogradation, whereby cooked starch molecules slowly rearrange themselves into a brittle, crystalline structure that traps moisture already in the bread and limits its ability to absorb more. And that’s a problem, because absorption is needed, whether you’re making a panade with bread crumbs or a stuffing with bread cubes. But you can still use your stale bread in stuffing and other applications. Just make sure to dry it out in the oven first so it can trap lots of flavorful liquid.”

Everyone raved about my dad's stuffing and I learned by watching him. My cousins still talk about it when holidays are remembered on our phone chats. When I was young we always had good bread in the house. Any leftover, stale French bread was dried out and saved in a brown paper sack in the corner of a cabinet for stuffing. Simple ingredients, no special seasonings, just salt and pepper, onions and celery. The latter is chopped very fine along with the neck meat and gizzard which was simply cooked in water. I've changed that part since I make a savory broth for gravy using the innards. But I use the meat the same way, chopping it very fine to add to the stuffing. The bread is broken up and well moistened in milk, the onions and celery sauteed in butter a a bit of oil and the milk moistened bread and meat is added to the skillet and fried. I mean it is turned over several times until it is browned a bit and starts to be crumbly yet still moist. I use a lot of butter. I use two electric skillets for this. I put it in the fridge overnight and stuff the bird right before roasting. this recipe never comes out soggy or gummy nor is is it too dry. My husband loves it and he always refused to eat any organ meats. Anything that doesn't fit into the bird gets baked along side in the final hour. It's mixed in with the bird stuffed stuffing before serving. So yes, I don't save bread but I do dry it out a week beforehand, usually in the oven for convenience.

The best dressing I ever had was when I went to the home of a college friend over T-giving break. It was made with kasha rather than any kind of bread, plus onions, celery, mushrooms, and a very fragrant and flavorful assortment of herbs. That was in 1970, so the memory has really stayed with me.

Kasha was a common side dish in our home. But turkey always had bread stuffing. Duck and goose were stuffed with kasha.

Rhizo, that sounds interesting.

I would cube and oven dry the bread, taking the opportunity to flavor it up - toss cubes in salt, pepper, herbs, spices, powdered onion or garlic, nutritional yeast, olive oil, what have you, before drying.

Some recipes call for fresh breadcrumbs, some for stale, but not dry. I usually use whatever I've got. I use breadcrumbs, not cubes.

I, following my mother, tear rather than cube or grate.

I'm an oven dried cuber, usually with a decent sourdough or a hearty, rustic loaf. Fresh bread creates too much of a mush for me.

I make a sausage cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving. A few days prior, I bake the cornbread on a sheet pan, and then let it dry out overnight. I place it in a container until ready to use.

I grew up in the Midwest, and many of my cooking traditions are rooted here, except for stuffing--and we called it dressing. One of my grandmothers made a strictly savory dressing from Italian loaves from her favorite bakery. My other grandmother added raisins to her dressing, from whatever white bread she had leftover. I love all dressings/stuffings, except those from the packaged pre-cubed variety.

Once I started preparing Thanksgiving meals, a family member requested a dressing that wasn't soggy, so I switched to cornbread, and continue to use it (no other bread involved).

So funny, I just got an email from 'serious eats' this morning explaining the difference between stale and dry. Dry is achieved in a low oven and they think that's the way to go. If making a traditional stuffing with sage, egg, celery etc we should use only white bread since its just a carrier for the rest of the ingredients. Artisanal or egg bread is fine if doing something more complex or fancier, like maybe my mushroom stuffing that has 3 or 4 varieties mushrooms depending on what I can find - and I've used about all from packaged unseasoned bread cubes to fresh challah bread in it. No one ever complains 😊

Feathers, my brothers wifes family traditionally had chili and cornbread after Christmas Eve church. They would make enough cornbread to be sure there was plenty for their stuffing in the morning. She left the cornbread chore to my mother one year. Mom read 7 tablespoons baking powder for 1 tablespoon baking powder from the handwritten recipe and put that whole large amount in. It was awful - Mom wasn't much of a cook and wasn't interested in learning.

LOL on the BP!

I adored my mother's stuffing, and some years ago I discovered that it just took more stock than she'd said to come close. I'm so interested that many of you use all one type of bread! We've always used a bunch of bits and pieces with different textures and colors, celery, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, sherry, eggs, stock, seasoning. One of the best bits in Passover stuffing (same recipe, dryer bread) is the mandlin ("soup nuts", tiny dry choux paste balls). I think I have some languishing in the freezer--it just occured to me that I can put some into the bread stuffing.

Good cornbread goes so well with chili. yum. But, egads, what your mom added.

I started using different breads a few years ago. I think the variety really adds to the basic bread/celery/sage dressing. Sour dough, corn bread, Hawaiian loaf this year. Even DH complimented it--and dressing is not his thing.

Morz, I just can't even imagine that much baking powder!

Grandma used all kinds of stale bread and started saving it months before the Thanksgiving turkey. Sandwich bread, buns, dinner rolls, whole wheat was OK, but no rye, no surprise there. It was always stale, then she'd cut it into cubes and toast it in the oven so it wouldn't mold, and it waited in an old bread bag until Thanksgiving. So I guess she dried it AND let it go stale.

My family doesn't mind different types of bread like dinner rolls/buns/etc. but they do not want it dried or stale, they want a squishy white loaf and they'd prefer the crusts cut off. So, in spite of Grandma's frugal example, that's what I do mostly, although I am not cutting the crusts off, I just tear it into chunks. As I've said before, taste is subjective and not objective and that's what they like so that's what I make. It's not a dish I eat, I make it for others and usually twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I have a grandson who just LOVES stovetop stuffing so I bought a box and showed him how easy it was to make. Now he makes it as a "snack" and that's fine by me too.

Annie

@annie1992 I recently had a real craving for stuffing and hadn't had Stove Top since I was a teen, but bought a box. If you don't read the ingredients, it's really not so bad. I like a moist stuffing and it fit the bill. Nice with the chicken I'd cooked for dinner. I was surprised!

Annie1992, you are so thoughtful.😘

petalique, I have told people that my kids are like cats, if I feed them they'll keep coming back, LOL.

Plus, if I make what they like they'll eat it all and not leave me with a big ole' pan of some leftovers I don't like and if they fill up on stuffing they leave more turkey for me!

I do try to be thoughtful but don't always succeed, sometimes I just blunder through and then shake my head at myself for whatever foolishness I've gotten myself into. My family seems to love me in spite of that and many people have eaten at my table. Most have survived. (grin)

Annie