How to Dry Bread for Stuffing in 3 Steps

Stuffing is a gluten-heavy type of bread dish that chefs and home cooks add to turkeys (and other poultry, meat, and so on) before cooking the protein. It can also serve as a side dish. As with many bread-centered recipes, it’s high in calcium, carbohydrates, and saturated fat.

Slightly stale bread absorbs meat juices and other ingredients better than moist, fresh bread. Some people simply use old bread for stuffing, while others prefer to dry out new bread as needed.

Manually drying bread takes less time than waiting for the bread to dry on its own. This also ensures the bread can absorb much more moisture than it would if it had aged naturally. As bread goes stale naturally, its own moisture hides out in certain portions and can dilute the flavor of any additional juices added when cooking stuffing. By drying out the bread yourself, it’s purged of its own moisture completely and all the flavorful juices the bread absorbs will retain every aspect of their unique and appealing tastes.

Drying out bread to make stuffing is simple. Follow these three steps to facilitate stuffing with just the right texture and taste:

1. 1. Choose the bread. Take a trip to your favorite grocery store to pick out whichever kind of bread you prefer to use for your stuffing. Keep in mind that the drier the bread is already, the easier it will be for the juices to deeply flavor it. Brioche, challah, cornbread, French bread, sourdough, and white bread are all popular options.
2. 2. Chop the bread. Lay out a baking sheet, take out a serrated knife, and begin cutting your baguettes (or loaves of bread) into half-inch cubes. Once you have them ready, drizzle olive oil onto the baking sheet and lay out a single layer of your own bread cubes evenly. Don’t add any other stuffing ingredients just yet. Remember that this process merely dries the bread in preparation to make stuffing later.
3. 3. Cook the bread. Preheat your oven to around 225 degrees. Take your baking dish or sheet pan covered in dried bread cubes, and place it in the oven for a total time of about 45 minutes. Once time is up, your bread should be thoroughly dried out and staled. You can either proceed immediately into implementing the rest of your stuffing recipe or store the dried bread for up to four or five days at room temperature before doing so.

You can serve stuffing on its own, but it’s more generally an accompaniment to much bigger meals. You might find a new favorite stuffing side dish among these four options:

1. 1. Chicken soup: If you’re not ready to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner but miss the taste of stuffing, consider preparing some dried bread up for dipping into chicken broth. The freshly dried bread cubes can serve as crispy croutons in any kind of soup, for that matter.
2. 2. Cranberry sauce: Complement your Thanksgiving recipes with another holiday favorite: cranberry sauce. This sweet, fruity treat provides a nice counterbalance to the more savory, doughy nature of stuffing.
3. 3. Meat: You might associate stuffing mainly with Thanksgiving turkeys, but you can always sample this bready recipe with other meats. You could dice up pork and include it amid the bread for a homemade sausage stuffing—or perhaps you’d enjoy stuffing a rotisserie chicken with it rather than its more common poultry accompaniment.
4. 4. Veggies: Various veggies work well in bread stuffing. The juices from turkey or other kinds of meat allow the dried bread and these herbs and vegetables to bond. You can also feel free to serve additional vegetables on the side.

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