Breakfast sausage and venison are used in this recipe. the four days it takes to make are totally worth it!
| Prep Time: | 10 mins |
| Cook Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 30 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 12 servings |
Ingredients
- ½ bulb garlic, peeled
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- ¾ (1 pound) loaf sourdough bread, cubed
- 1 cup ghee
Instructions
- Combine garlic and oil in a small saucepan. Simmer until cloves are a light gold color, about 15 minutes. Pour oil through a fine sieve, squeeze all juice from cloves, and then discard the solids. Set garlic oil aside.
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Lightly oil a baking sheet.
- Arrange bread cubes in a single layer on baking sheet. Bake, turning bread cubes periodically, until lightly browned, about 20 minutes.
- In a large, non-stick skillet, melt 1/3 cup ghee with 1/3 cup garlic oil over medium heat. Cook toasted bread cubes in batches until light to medium golden brown, turning frequently. Add more ghee and garlic oil as needed. Turn out into basket lined with paper towels, and drain for about 20 minutes.
- For other uses – garden salad, soup, etcetera – you can add dried herbs of your choice, but if you do, don’t use them with a Caesar salad! Too many flavour contrasts.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 402 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 17 g |
| Cholesterol | 44 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 4 g |
| Saturated Fat | 13 g |
| Sodium | 183 mg |
| Sugars | 1 g |
| Fat | 36 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
2.3.22 This was a lot of work for croutons. They tasted good, although a bit oily. Honestly, the choice of greens and dressing, are more important to me than the choice of croutons (just personal opinion). Watch them once you get them into the skillet because they do brown very quickly. And I really don’t understand why you bake the croutons at the outset rather than just lightly toasting them? Good, but too much time spent in preparation for a crouton that would have satisfied me just as easily coming out of a bag, even on a really nice Caesar salad.
FABULOUS!! Entire family loves these!
Please to respond. What is ghee and either how is it made, or where can it be purchased? Jim Mathews
I simply browned them in the skillet with butter, olive oil, garlic powder, onion powder, grated Parmesan cheese and salt after baking for 17 min. They turned out great!
Way, way, way too much oil/ butter. I’ve been doing this for years just tossing the bread cubes in a couple of tbsb oil and using garlic powder then baking in the oven. Not near as fattening and so good.
My family ate them like candy. Hardly had enough to put in the salad!
i used an 8 oz sourdough bagette for this.. used 3 large garlic cloves and 1/4 c of olive oil.. sauteed up the garlic and then mashed it into the oil.. didn’t remove the chunks.. threw in the bread crumbs to soak up all the goodness.. then put it in a ziplock and added season salt, black pepper, and italian seasonings.. shook around.. baked at 350 for a lil over 20 mins.. it was so done at 19.. but it still came out good.. ty for something to start with as this is my first time making home made croutons
Great recipe but I did change it up the second time…and I’ll never go back to the original. I used 1 stick of melted butter…to the butter I added a tbsp. olive oil and the garlic. Put all the cubed sourdough bread in a large mixing bowl and slowly pour the butter mixture over the bread, be sure to mix the bread while doing so to ensure all the bread is covered. Once it’s all covered, I lightly sprinkled McCormick’s California Style Garlic Salt & Garlic Pepper on the bread…only put as much as your personal preference. Lay the final product out on a cookie sheet, one layer thick and bake in the oven at 350 F for 20 minutes…broil them for an additional minute or so…only toasting them to your preference. YUM!
These are so good they are evil. Thanks.
Great general recipe. I reduced the ghee amount by 1/2 as others did, and added a sprinkling of 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese prior to baking. Came out wonderfully crunchy and the kids were eating the croutons right out of the oven until I had to stop them!
These turned out really good. I had to add some garlic powder and salt when frying b/c the 5 cloves I used to make the garlic oil was not strong enough for our taste. Next time I will use more than 5 cloves. I also experimented with my 2nd batch and just added the oil and salt to the bread cubes and baked them that way without frying afterward. These also turned out good but not quite as yummy as the fried ones.
Throw the roasted garlic away? No way! Pop it in your mouth, or spread it on some toast.
made this “as is” and thought it was good but a tad too hard and dry. You really have to watch them as they can burn very easy on the bottoms when cooking them in the oil. used the same recipe with fresh french bread cut into 1 inch squares and did not dry them in the oven. they came out not too crisp and just a bit chewy.
These were good, but I found them too hard (texture-wise). I prefer my croutons to have a little give to them. Store-bought croutons have to be hard so they keep for a long time, but I find them more satisfying when they’re not so hard. I would skip baking them first if I made them again.
These are pretty good, but I think that I need to go back to the croutons that are only toasted in the oven. I have a tendency to turn my back on things on the stovetop and they subsequently burn, so not the best recipe for me. I do much better with things I don’t have to watch like a hawk, and I’ve had success with croutons that are baked. However, I do like the idea. I didn’t do the garlic and oil thing bc I bought chive oil yesterday, so I used that instead. The ones I didn’t burn were pretty good. Thanks for the recipe!
Great croutons, are very munchable as a snack. I added savory, dried parsley and some dried chilies…not spicy but oh so yummy. The oil and butter together is the key, and I don’t clarify the butter first or strain the garlic and spices out, or fry the bread…just sautee and brush on! Flip bread pieces once and brush again, it takes about 30 minutes at 300 degrees…I love these croutons!
Excellent! The key is the toasting. Also, I did not squeeze the juice from the garlic as my husband doesn’t do well with garlic. You could still taste it but it wasn’t overpowering. Cooked the garlic only half the time because it got brown too fast. Had to make more because we kept snacking on them!
perfect.
Didn’t add the “ghee” although I did think of adding regular butter, but they were very good without either. I used 2 tb of olive oil and .5 tb of rosemary infused olive oil. I then added dry Greek herb seasoning to the oil mixture. I tossed the bread(used a day-old baguette, no need for toasting) in and baked them on a cookie sheet at 350 for maybe 10 minutes.
I think the trick to this recipe is baking the cubes before you fry them which most other recipes don’t suggest. I had a little too much garlic oil so I won’t make so much next time… Everyone loved the croutons.
Anyone wondering what the heck ghee is – it’s clarified butter!!!