Creative uses for leftover bread

I saw an article that said that bread had more lives than a cat.  We all know that a cat has nine lives.

How can bread be given more lives?

You can refresh the bread by spraying it with water. When it absorbs some moisture, just bake it for 10 minutes.
Or you can dry it completely and mill to get breadcrumbs.
You can break it into pieces and add to goulash and the sauce will be nicely absorbed into bread.
Use dried pieces for salads, Fattoush for example.
You can soak it in raw egg and spices and fry.
Pieces can be eaten soaked in warm milk and some honey.

I grind up the dry end pieces of bread and rolls into flour, and use it when I bake the next one. I only substitute about 10-20% but it all adds up. I also like using it as breading instead of flour.

I love a stale bread and tomato salad in summer, when tomatoes are ripe and juicy. Tear the bread into small pieces and pout in a salad bowl. Chop up the tomatoes and add to the bowl, including the juice. Squish it all together well, add a strinkle of salt, and let it stand a while till the bread soaks up the tomato juice. Add a glug each of vinegar and oil and some basil leaves. Soooooo good!

In winter I will toast stale bread, make croutons for soup, or tear it up small and add to wet casseroles or stews.

Bread pudding is good comfort food, too. Bread and butter pudding uses sugar, egg, and milk to make a custard to pour over slices of buttered stale bread before baking slowly until the custard sets. Traditionally the poorer town person's version of English bread pudding is crumbled stale bread mixed with milk, sugar, and dried fruit (no egg) and then baked until it's a heavy fruit cake consistency.

As already mentioned, homemade breadcrumbs have so many uses.

I've never tried the bread soaked in milk and sweetened for breakfast, but it's very popular in many parts of Europe, especially for children.

No bread need ever go to waste!

Stuffing! My mom always saved up bread heels to use for thanksgiving stuffing (dressing to some folks).

She would then sauté onions and celery in butter until soft, throw in the cubed, dry bread, enough broth to moisten it and season with salt, pepper, and dried parsley. Raisins or chopped apples sometimes made an appearance.

Some was stuffed in the turkey, the rest baked in a casserole dish with butter on top.

I would add to the bread pudding suggestion - butter the bread and spread with jam or better still marmalade, arrange in dish (I take the crusts off) and pour the custard over.  I also read a Amish recipes that used bread crumbs in the custard.
Left over sliced bread - crusts off, press into muffin/tart tins and use instead of pastry for little quiches etc. A quick spray with oil helps brown them.

+1 on bread pudding. My mother in her 80's makes a bread pudding that pretty much blows away anything you can buy at a bakery. Crispy and crusty on top and below, and moist and pudding like in the middle, in a large but shallow ceramic baking pan. Damn, I need to get that recipe in writing pronto.

I like to toast the heels because no one at my house eats them.

Sometimes that is all I have for super.

I also like to make croutons from the heel and top a bowl of soup with them.