Les Trois Chênes

Here in France we eat the local baguettes fresh and certainly on the same day as it is bought. So what to do with the left overs? This blog is devoted to the reuse of old bread to create gourmet dishes and to collect recipes for stale bread, traditional and new, from around the world. Why throw away good food when you can transform it into wonderful sweet and savoury dishes?

Feel free to send me any ideas and recipes.


Situated in the Limousin, the heart of hidden France, we run painting courses from our old French farmhouse, and offer Bed & Breakfast and self-catering holiday accommodation. We grow as much of our own food as possible, serve eggs fresh from our own hens and honey from our bees for breakfasts and evening meals. We love France, we love art and we love good food & wine. We would love to share this with you.




Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Why Waste Bread?

I admit that frugality and old fashioned miserliness is not terribly fashionable at the moment, but being green, saving the world and eating fabulous food is. One of my hobby horses has always been food waste. This was probably partly due to being brought up by a post-war mother and continually being told to 'clean my plate', and being reminded that if I didn't want the food that was put in front of me, there were many starving children in the world who did. Well, of course, being a child all this was water off a ducks back. I only wished that they would send the wretched dinner to Africa or wherever.

It was when I moved to the Limousin, the rural heartland of France, and started to explore the traditional cuisine of this region that I was struck by the number of recipes that specified 'stale bread' as a main or essential ingredient. This was a very poor area of France, and the people who lived here were mostly farmers. They knew how hard it was to grow, harvest, store and cook the food on the table and I expect very little went to waste. This set me thinking. Mostly, I had given the scraps from the table and old bread to 1. The Dog 2. The Cat 3. The Hens 4. The Geese 5. The Sheep - in that order, but really, it doesn't do to feed the animals on perfectly good (if not perfectly fresh) baguettes!

When, after several years of building and restoring, we opened Les Trois Chênes Bed & Breakfast the problem was compounded. More bread that has to be served absolutely fresh, and more waste. So this blog is devoted to uses and recipes from all over the world designed to transform old bread into delicious gourmet dishes.

I would be delighted to receive your ideas, comments and recipes.

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