How Jacques Pépin Transforms Stale Bread

Jacques Pépin is proof that beautiful cooking doesn’t need to rely on excess or luxury ingredients in order to be delicious. 

The renowned chef grew up in France during World War II’s rationing, an experience where meat was often scarce, and his mother had to get creative with what was available in the kitchen. In the years afterward, Pépin continued to advocate for minimizing food waste throughout his career and many cookbooks.

This approach to food fosters creativity by inspiring a desire to use up every scrap possible, often resulting in delicious dishes. As a result, it’s no surprise that Jacques Pépin has an ingenious way to repurpose stale bread with a no-recipe recipe that I’ll be making for years to come.

The cookbook author, television host, and 11-time James Beard Award winner transforms a few slices of leftover bread into pancakes — or as he also calls them, flapjacks — in under five minutes. It’s a customizable dish that calls for only five ingredients, and you likely have everything you need to make it already in your kitchen.

How to make Jacques Pépin’s bread pancake

Besides salt, pepper, and oil, you’ll need five ingredients on deck to whip up Pépin’s savory bread pancake: two or three slices of leftover or stale bread, milk, an egg, an onion (yellow, white, or a shallot would work), and your herb of choice.

As Pépin explains in a clip shared online earlier this year, it “could be any type of bread,” and he appears to be combining two different breads. Cube the bread; aim for about two ounces or one cup once it’s chopped. Pour a quarter cup of milk into a bowl, then add the bread.

Next, the French chef roughly chops some onion and parsley — you could substitute any tender herb, and Pépin notes that “I use a lot of herbs when they are plentiful in my garden — and adds those to the bowl of bread.

Pépin suggests using about three tablespoons of onion, but there’s no need to measure the aromatics precisely. Trust your judgment on how much onion and herbs you’d like per serving.

He seasons everything with salt and pepper, then begins to “crush it up a little bit with my hand,” using his fingers to combine the ingredients and break up the cubes of bread.

If the mixture is too dry, the chef suggests adding a little more milk. Pépin then cracks an egg into the bowl, using his fingers again to mix it into the other ingredients. (Consider this a reminder that a chef’s best tool in the kitchen is their hands.)

From there, it’s time to cook. Pépin heats a generous amount of oil in a pan — he suggests olive or peanut oil, anything that can handle some heat — and scoops the pancake mixture into the skillet using a measuring cup, pressing the thick batter into a pancake-like shape. (He makes three small pancakes, but if you want more, you could easily scale this “recipe” up. Just make sure you’re using a ratio of four parts bread to one part milk and one egg.)

As each pancake turns a deep golden brown on one side, he flips it to cook the other side. These crispy, browned, savory flapjacks resemble fritters once they’re done. Pépin even offers an easy way to serve them: with a dollop of sour cream or crème fraîche on top. As he mentions, these make a great breakfast or appetizer.

You can put a sweet spin on these pancakes

Not craving something savory? Don’t worry, the legendary chef points out that these flapjacks can easily be customized to create a sweet rendition of the dish.

Instead of salt and pepper, use two tablespoons of sugar or honey as a seasoning, and replace the onions and parsley with fruit, such as half a peach, pear, apple, or banana. Pépin says to “chop it coarsely, put it in the [pancake mixture], and do the same pancake and then serve it with maple syrup.”

Stale bread, eggs, and milk are what you also use to make French toast, so pairing them with fruit would be delicious. If you feel like mixing it up, you could add a sprinkle of cinnamon into the “batter” too — Pépin would undoubtedly encourage you to make this dish your own, as long as you’re utilizing ingredients you already have.