Breadcrumbs

Take a piece of dried bread and grind it, and you get breadcrumbs. That's it — no mystery, just bread that has given up most of its water and turned brittle enough to shatter into crumbs instead of bending. That's the whole mechanism: bread is already porous, thanks to leavening and baking, and as it dries, that same structure of gluten and starch simply stiffens and turns rigid, so it snaps instead of folding. Tap a crust — if it sounds hollow and feels light in your hand, the bread is ready to become crumbs.

Choose breadcrumbs the way you choose flour: by colour and smell. They should be pale gold, dry to the touch, and smell of toasted grain, not of dust or, worse, of nothing at all — no smell means old, stale crumbs that will only make your coating taste of cardboard.

Some people say breadcrumbs are just filler, cheap padding for cutlets and meatballs. No! A hundred grams of breadcrumbs carries 13.35 grams of protein — that's not filler, that's substance, close to what you'd find in bread itself. Treat them as filler, and you'll skimp on them and get a thin, weepy coating that falls off in the pan instead of holding, crisping, and doing its real job — protecting the meat while it cooks.