We have an ongoing problem with bread at the wine and cheese shop where
I work. Enough customers want it and buy it to make it worth our while
to carry it, but we have to carry a quality product, and we can only get
that from a bakery some distance away. They deliver, but they only
deliver in quantity, and we frequently have bread leftover. We end up
throwing away a lot of stale bread. We'd like to order less, but then
they wouldn't deliver. We could order from another bakery, but their
bread isn't as good so we'd sell still less. We could order every other
day, but then it wouldn't be fresh. You get the idea.


The other day my boss had another idea: What if we made gourmet bread
crumbs? He asked how to make bread crumbs. My co-worker and I agreed
that it was a simple matter of breaking up the bread in a blender,
adding some dried herbs like basil and oregano, and spinning the
blender. I said we should toast the bread first; she said we didn't
even have to do that.


Two problems: First, we're not sure if our customers are in the market
for gourmet bread crumbs, but even beyond that, we're thinking the bread
crumbs would go bad. At home, I keep them in my freezer. If I don't,
they go moldy like any bread. At which point my boss asked about the
bread crumbs you buy in the store. What keeps them from getting moldy?
Good question, so I thought I'd ask all of you. Is it a matter of a
preservative that we could put in them? Or could we dry them enough in
the oven and sell them in a sealed container such that the mold wouldn't
be interested?


--Lia