Homemade Panko Breadcrumbs – it is easy to learn how to make panko breadcrumbs at home with almost no effort! Use it for crunchy coated fried or baked foods like chicken, vegetables, fish or seafood.
As many of you already know, Panko is a variety of Japanese-style breadcrumb traditionally used as a crunchy coating for deep-fried foods like chicken, vegetables, fish or seafood. Only recently did it appear on shelves of stores in my neighborhood. It is still pretty hard to find and also very pricey.
Good news is that when you need it, you can make it easily at home at just a fraction of price.
The best bread to use is soft white crustless bread. You can use whole wheat bread as well, but the color of your crumbs will be darker. Majority of people who make panko bread crumbs at home use food processor to process fresh bread. I took a little different path.
What is Panko Made From
I watched a documentary how panko breadcrumbs are made. First they bake large loaves of white bread. But they do not bake the bread in the oven. They are letting electric current go through the dough instead. This process creates a loaf without the crust, white in color and soft in texture. Then they use giant industrial graters to get large, sliver-shaped crumbs.
That gave me an idea to make homemade panko by grating the bread instead of processing it.
First I tried hand grater and it worked fine, but it takes a lot of time. I thought I could speed up the process by using shredding disk of my food processor to coarsley grind the bread. I was unpleasantly surprised with the result. I got large clumps of wet bread which could not be used at all. Then I used regular S-shaped blade (sabatier) of the processor which was a little better, but still not good enough. To my amazement, I got the best results by pulsing the bread 1-2 times in my blender. I didn’t expect that to work at all.
Panko bread crumbs need to remain totally white after drying process. First time I dried panko breadcrumbs in 32 F (60 C) oven for about 60-70 minutes. Second time I increased the temperature to 300 F (150 C) and in 5-7 minutes I got dry panko crumbs. Just this time I had to be very careful not to let panko brown.
With almost no effort, it is easy to learn how to make panko breadcrumbs at home. You can have tons of them for all your crunchy creations whenever you like!
Homemade Panko Breadcrumbs – it is easy to learn how to make panko breadcrumbs at home with almost no effort! Use it for crunchy coated fried or baked foods like chicken, vegetables, fish or seafood.
- 300 g soft crustless white bread 10.5 oz
-
Grate bread by hand using hand grater. Or pulse it 1-2 times in your blender.
-
Spread a thin layer on a baking sheet covered with baking paper.
-
Bake at 140 F (60 C) for 60-70 min. or at 300 F (150 C) for 5-7 min. Be careful not to let them brown.
-
Take out of the oven and let cool. Store Homemade Panko Breadcrumbs in glass jars.
Do you know how long these will stay fresh if kept in a jar in the cabinet? I have been putting the crumbs in the freezer then “baking” them as needed for recipes.
Yesterday I used the jar I made 2 months ago and it was perfectly fine. Since crumbs are totally dry, they should keep for several months without any problem.
For years, I have been doing this not knowing the crumbs were panko. I put the slices in the oven, dry them out, and then run them through the food processor. The result is crunchy bread crumbs and a much simpler process.
Yes, the procedure you explained will give you crunchy bread crumbs, but they’re not panko. I do that when I want to use up my leftover bread. Such breadcrumbs are very useful for many things. The difference is that these type of crumbs turn out very small. On the other hand, panko breadcrumbs are very large and especially good for coating for deep-fried foods.
You can control the size of the crumbs by using pulse on the food processor. I do some with very large crumbs and some much smaller for shake and bake type items.
Place in zip locking bag and place in freezer. Will keep up to 6 months
My oven doesn’t have a 32 degrees Fahrenheit setting.
I’m sorry for that. My old oven was the same.
But my freezer does!
60 degrees Celsius is 140 Fahrenheit.