What's the best (fastest, most efficient) way to make breadcrumbs from scratch, without having any old bread?
I'm curious if there's something quick I can do, when I realize I want 5 cups of breadcrumbs and have no old bread, and don't want to buy or bake a loaf of bread just to immediately pulverize it.
That is, what is the fastest, simplest, easiest bread-like thing one could make, which would turn into breadcrumbs in a food processor?
One more edit: I didn't really intend this to be asking "what other ready-made things can I buy (or have around) and turn into breadcrumb substitutes". I want to know, at the very least, the best way to streamline the process of making and drying bread given the fact that I don't care if it's ever moist enough to eat as bread, and don't care about its overall shape or texture or anything else we usually care about in bread.
Best Answer
Dry biscuits (American 'biscuits' - not cookies), or anything other flour based quick bread that dried out - if you're trying to replicate the bread crumbs. You may be able to get by with a modified muffin recipe as well. You'll want to avoid fats and oils to reduce the moistness.
Yeast bread develops a particular flavor and larger hole structure than quick bread though. The flavor of a quick bread breadcrumbs should be slightly different, but in many dishes the subtle difference won't be overwhelming unless the breading is a 'star' of the dish. The hole structure really doesn't matter luckily - as developing that is a large part of the time factor of real bread.
Drying it out will be the harder part. The denser structure holds moisture better, so slice it thin and give it low, dry, long heat.
Personally, anything that you're going to make for the purpose of breadcrumbs that isn't just a substitute (like cereal, crackers, etc in the other answer), sounds like it'd be easier just to make a loaf of fast rise bread to me.