Semmelschmarrn

Gretel always said you can judge a cook by what she does with yesterday's bread. In Austria, nobody throws out a Semmel. The hard rolls go into Knödel, into Brösel for Schnitzel, into Scheiterhaufen. And if you're lucky, they go into Semmelschmarrn.

I grew up eating this in my grandmother Eva's kitchen in Kent before I ever understood it as a recipe. Eva would save the bread rolls from Saturday, slice them on Monday, and soak them in sweetened milk and eggs with a scrape of lemon zest. Then into a hot pan with too much butter, torn apart with two forks, and fried until the edges went dark and crispy and the soft middles stayed like warm custard. She'd shake powdered sugar over the top and put it in front of me with stewed apples. I didn't know it was frugal. I thought it was a treat.

That's the trick of Semmelschmarrn, and of so much Austrian farmhouse cooking. It was born from the rule that nothing good gets wasted, but it doesn't taste like making do. It tastes like butter and sugar and golden bread and the kind of warmth that makes you close your eyes. The technique is simple: soak, fry, tear, caramelize. If you can make scrambled eggs, you can make this. The only thing it asks of you is a bit of patience while the bread soaks and enough courage to use the full amount of butter.