Bread is like a sponge, when deep-fried, it sucks so much oil. Making Croutons at home, makes you acknowledge that sip-sup. Otherwise, we are ok to be ignorant about the calorie count of croutons served in a restaurant with soup. Fake applauding ourselves for making a good choice at the dinner table. “I am having soup”, which is like a self-congratulating devotion for making the right choice.

If you are honestly trying to lose some digits from your weighing scale. Believe in calorie count. Have soup, but skip the fried croutons. By the way, I can munch on croutons without soup. They are delicious and tempting and gets addictive if you don’t close the box and keep them out of sight. My solution is, to not make them at home and serve the soup with breadsticks. 

I have this amazing recipe of soup stick for you here. 

Baked croutons have actually changed my perspective about croutons. I still don’t need soup with them, can munch them just like that. But at least they are baked and spiced with herbs. The deliciousness is taken to the next level with fewer calories. 

Have you tried baked croutons with day-old pav? With bread, many of you must be doing it, but using a pav to make croutons is intelligent. The internal structure of the pav is airy and have a wider net structure. When baked, they become ultra crispy and you will experience the crunch. 

You can keep them plain, but I like to spice them up. The combination in this recipe is minced garlic, pizza seasoning and red chilli. You can reduce the quantity or feel free to change the spice according to your choice. But do try the recipe. You will never return to fried croutons. 

The recipe video is attached in the post below. Oven-Baked Spiced Croutons are very simple to make at home. 

Tip: Don’t use fresh pav to make these croutons. A day-old or two days old pav would be perfect to make Oven Baked Spiced Croutons. If you cover and keep the leftover pav in the fridge, and use it to make the croutons, they will make better croutons. The old pav is so easy to cut into smaller cubes and it leaves the least amount of bready dust on the counter. 

You can change the spice combination, just be conscious about the oven temperature. This has to be baked at 150*C and it is important to change the side of croutons after 10 minutes of baking. Shuffle them and bake again for 15 minutes. They will get crispy inside out. But depends on the oven and size of the croutons. You will have to use your judgement at this point, a little less or a little more baking time should be your call. Make sure to shuffle them, so you get even colour. 

Let the baked croutons cool in the oven itself (power off) keep the door of the oven ajar and let them cool in the oven. This will help them get crispier, and you will make crunchy noises when eating them. It is such a fantastic textural joy when you bite on a crunchy crispy baked crouton. yum yum.

The garlic and pizza seasoning combination is one of my favourite combinations, when baked together the aroma amazes me. It’s the air you want to inhale more and more. The Kashmiri red chilli is used for colour more than the spice. When croutons look good and the name says spiced baked croutons they have to look spicy. With the orange hue, they can wake up your appetite. 

This is the best equipment to mince garlic in no time. 

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