Croutons

Yes, croutons. We had never thought about making our own. In fact, Pamela does not even eat croutons, but she knows I like them. A lot.

So when I returned from a trip, she surprised me with some croutons she had made while I was gone. She had stumbled across Homemade Croutons in the Air Fryer, and decided to make some, even though she would not be eating them. Part of the attraction (aside being nice to me) is the opportunity to use up some bread that might otherwise go to waste. Which is the whole point of croutons, I suppose.

She had made the croutons in our relatively new electric stove, which has an air-fryer setting. It might be for that reason that the timing needed a little adjustment. The recipe calls for 4 minutes at 400F, then some stirring, and then another 2 minutes. Pam extended that second step to 3 minutes. The result was tasty but a little soft. 

Today we decided to try again, with Old Bay in addition to the seasonings the recipe calls for (we met in Maryland, after all). 

This time we extended the second step to 4 minutes -- a total of 8 minutes cooking. We also simply left the basket in the oven to cool and dry. We were out of the house for a couple hours and on our return, I ate some right of the basket. THEY WERE PERFECT. Even better (for me): the oily, salty mess of crumbs on the tray under the basket. Yum!

We will definitely be repeating this recipe, and experimenting with the seasonings. I imagine that users with their own air fryers might need to experiment with the timing just a bit.