Do you love homemade croutons? Make delicious buttery croutons in your air fryer. You can make flavorful crispy seasoned croutons in about 10 minutes in your air fryer.
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Turn Ordinary Bread into Flavorful Croutons
You don’t need to buy fancy bread to make these salad toppings everyone loves. Turn ordinary sandwich bread into delicious crispy croutons. You could use leftover baguettes, loaves of French bread, or other bread.
It doesn’t matter if the bread is white, wheat, or pumpernickel. All you need is a few slices of leftover bread, butter, and some seasonings and you can get started.
Stale bread is perfect!
Have you ever had a loaf of stale bread? Perhaps you have a loaf of bread and it’s past the point of making sandwiches, as long as the bread is not moldy you can use it to make croutons. Never eat bread after it has turned moldy. Moldy bread is not safe to eat even if you cut off the moldy parts.
Recipe Ingredients
Here’s a list of what you need:
- Bread – use your favorite bread. Some of my favorite types of bread to use are sourdough, whole wheat, honestly, this is a great way to use up day-old bread.
- Butter – you could use olive oil, or avocado oil if you want to make this recipe vegan
- Parsley – you could use an Italian seasoning blend if you desire
- Onion powder
- Seasoned salt
- Garlic powder
How to Make Croutons
- Grab four or five slices of bread. Then grab either a serrated knife or a very sharp knife. Cutting the bread slices with a serrated knife is ideal, as the bread won’t tear.
- Cut the bread into bite-sized bread cubes.
- Melt some butter, and then grab some seasonings. I like to use onion powder, parsley, garlic salt, and seasoned salt. I combine the butter and seasonings together in a medium-sized bowl.
- After the seasoned butter is ready, carefully stir in the bread, and stir to coat very well.
- Toss the seasoned bread into the basket of your air fryer, and cook these up for about 7 minutes. These will begin to smell fragrant.
- After air frying for 7 minutes, remove the air fryer basket, and allow the croutons to cool to room temperature You will have a delicious bowl of homemade croutons. Enjoy these on your favorite salad or soup.
No Air Fryer? No problem. Make Homemade Croutons on Your Stovetop
While this recipe is developed for an air fryer, you can prepare this same recipe by heating up a large skillet to medium, tossing in the seasoned bread, and cooking it for 5 to 7 minutes.
You will need to stir the bread every 30 seconds or so. The bread will brown. So you can make these on the stovetop.
Other uses for these crunchy croutons
You may want to use this air fryer croutons recipe for other dishes than just salads. One of my favorite ways to savory croutons is as a topping on your favorite soups. Soups I love croutons on are:
- Creamy tomato soup
- French onion soup
- Cheddar cheese beer soup
- Gazpacho
- Broccoli cheese soup
You can also use crispy air fryer croutons in recipes such as your favorite stuffing recipe, or in any recipe that requires bread crumbs such as your favorite meatloaf recipe.
How to store leftover croutons
I know you are going to love these more than store-bought croutons, so you will want to save these. Make sure they are at room temperature, and then store them in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Need more recipes for your air fryer? Check out these air fryer recipes.
Use Croutons on These Salads
More Recipes for Stale bread
Be sure to check out more of my delicious homemade salads and easy bread recipes.
Air Fryer Croutons
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter melted
- 1 teaspoon parsley
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
- 4 slices bread cut into bite-sized pieces
Instructions
- Preheat the air fryer to 390°F.
- In a medium-sized bowl, combine the butter, parsley, onion powder, seasoned salt, and garlic salt. Stir well.
- Add the bread to the bowl and carefully stir to coat the bread with the seasoned butter.
- Place buttered bread into the air fryer basket and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the bread is toasted. Serve immediately.
Barbara
Loved it. I did double the recipe and exchanged half the butter with olive oil
Sheila
Thank You for this recipe! I used Asiago bread and, like someone else commented, thank goodness dinner is soon or else there wouldn’t be any left! No more store-bought croutons for me!
Joan
Easy to make, but I substituted the seasoned salt with dried herbs -parsley or whatever is even my spice cabinet. So much better than the store bought croutons and love how I can control amount of salt. I wonder how long they will keep in a ziploc bag?
Russ
Perfect and so easy! I used a small baguette and didn’t need to change the quantities of the remaining ingredients. In 7 minutes, they were beautifully golden, crunchy on the outside and slightly soft in the center. Fortunately, dinner will be soon, or I’d eat the whole lot, nibble by nibble!
Rebecca
Thank you! This was very easy and fast! Mine only needed like three minutes and they were perfect.
Stephanie Manley
Awesome! Glad they worked for you!
Ren
So good and easy to make – will never buy store bought again! I make multiple batches & freeze most of them. We eat them within minutes of taking them out of the freezer. Recently purchased an air fryer and I’ve never been so addicted to cooking before! These croutons are the best!!!
Sharon
Love these! I just tried a new soup, Roasted Parsnip and Apples. It mentioned adding croutons and with a quick search, found this recipe. These are so good!! These could just be a snack on their own, better than Chex Mix.
Karen
I made these with stale Costco bagels & they were to die for!! Thanks for the idea!!
Lisa
WOW These are amazing and sooooo easy and fast. My 9-year old daughter just wanted to eat them as a snack! LOL I’ve now made these several times. I don’t even measure anymore. It’s really THAT easy. They definitely make a salad better. In my AF it’s only 5 minutes on 390. So watch them carefully near the end.
Gail
Absolutely divine! Just made them and tasted and it’s omg goodness!
Christy
I substituted Ranch Seasoning instead of the parsley, garlic, and onion powder. It was really good!
Ruby
Can I give this 10 stars…. Had to substitute the parsley did have any and instead I used Italian seasoning. It was amazing!! Can’t stop eating the croutons!!
CR
These came out so good. They were crunchy yet light and pillowy. They had a nice light garlicky flavor and just salty enough. This is a keeper!
fitoru
Will try this recipe one of these days.. This one looks delicious..
fitoru
I love trying out different recipes from online and I’m glad to have come across this one.. 🙂
Toni
I really loved it! Can’t wait to make it again!
Suzy
I feel like I need to buy an air fryer ASAP! We love making homemade croutons but would never of thought to do it in the air fryer! Thank you!
Liz
What a fabulous recipe! I’m new to the air fryer, but these were terrific!
Julie
Croutons are my weakness. I can say that I definitely ate more out of the bowl than in my salad! But so good and a great use of stake bread.
Francisco Velez
Hi, please state at what temperature….
Stephanie
The first instruction is to preheat at 390 degrees, please cook it at the same temperature.