Bread Overload!

A week ago I was given an abundance of bread by a church friend. This gift included:

• 4 loaves of Costco Pugliese Bread
• 4 loaves of Costco Whole Grain Bread
• 2 Costco Baguettes
• 6 big Costco sandwich rolls
• 2 packages of 6 bagels each

Here's a photo of about half of it



This is obviously a lot of bread and it has been a little more complicated to use because the bread had already passed its pull date and was starting to harden. So what do I do with all of this? Without filling up my freezer (which as you all know I'm trying to get empty!)? It has been a carb-tastic week. Here's what we've done so far:

• First I sliced up the baguettes and half of the sandwich rolls into thin wafers. I make a yummy appetizer that uses bread slice that way, so it was a good place to start. Those pieces are in the fridge in Ziplocs for now. I'll use about half for company this weekend.
• The other sandwich rolls were still soft enough to use for sandwiches so DH had some leftover pulled pork on one and I made sandwiches for lunch on two days, but I ended up dipping into a glass of milk to soften the bread a bit. The big girls got a kick out of that and thought I was So Silly!
• I also tried making croutons for the first time. I used one of the whole grain loaves and they didn't turn out well. I think I'll try again with white bread & I'll post about that whole process another day.
• Last night we had french toast for dinner (DH wasn't eating at home) using a loaf of the whole grain bread. It worked much better as french toast than as croutons! It was so yummy we used a second loaf this morning for more french toast.
• We have had soup for dinner twice this week and eaten bread along with it, dipping it in the broth.
• I also have been enjoying a few slices dipped in olive oil and basalmic vinegar as an afternoon snack this week.
• A friend also suggested making bread crumbs - thanks Christina! - so I'm planning to try those, too.

Do you have any other ideas on how to use this bread up?
I'll post about the bread crumbs, croutons, & yummy appetizers the first week of May - I'll be out of town so I thought I'd load up a "kitchen week" during my absence.

Katie