Baked bread burgers are delicious appetizers made with stale bread and other ingredients to make them even more scrumptious. They can be prepared for buffets, or served as a second course or main dish to enjoy at work, during leisure time, or for a tasty dinner with friends. We can also prepare them without eggs, gluten-free, and customize them as we like. This recipe allows us to recover and use up stale bread without waste, creating a tasty preparation that will also please the little ones. The texture of baked bread burgers is soft on the inside and more compact on the outside. For the more indulgent, bread burgers can also be fried. Here you will also find a delicious recipe to make delicious leek and bread balls; you will find more in the blog.
- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Very Cheap
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 6
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter and Spring
Ingredients
- 14.1 oz stale bread (also gluten-free)
- 1 medium egg (alternatively a boiled potato)
- 15 green olives
- 1 tbsp pecorino romano
- to taste fine salt
- to taste ground pepper
- to taste breadcrumbs (for breading)
- to taste extra virgin olive oil
Preparation
We can replace the egg with a potato, weighing a little more than 3.5 oz, boiled and well mashed.
Place the stale bread in a large bowl filled with cold water and let it soften well.
Pit the olives and chop them with a knife.
When the bread is soaked (it should not fall apart), drain it and squeeze it as much as possible to release most of the absorbed water. Then, transfer it to a colander and let it continue to lose water for a few more minutes.
After that, we can mash it with a fork or with our hands to obtain a grainy mixture.
Add all the other ingredients and mix them perfectly.
The consistency of the dough should not be hard but not mushy either, otherwise, we won’t be able to form the burgers and the final taste will suffer.
If the dough is too hard or dry, we can add a tablespoon of water or a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, gradually, until a soft yet compact consistency is achieved.
Conversely, if it is mushy, we can add breadcrumbs or more finely chopped dry bread to absorb the excess moisture that has made our dough soft.
Turn on the oven and set it to 392°F.
Put some breadcrumbs in a deep plate.
Take a ball the size of a small orange and shape it into a hamburger about 1 finger thick.
Roll it in the breadcrumbs and place it on the baking tray covered with parchment paper. Continue until all the bread mixture is used up. Brush them on top with a little extra virgin olive oil and, if desired, some crushed pumpkin or sunflower seeds, or others.
Bake the bread burgers at mid-height for about 20 minutes. Take them out of the oven, let them cool, and enjoy them with some fresh salad or accompanying sauces.
If we don’t want to turn on the oven, we can also fry our bread burgers.
