While staying in the home of a friend on my last visit to Madrid, I noticed he had a "jamon Iberico bellota, cinco jotas" in his kitchen. When I commented on this, he said "help yourself".

The bread was stale.

Oh my gosh!!! What a crime!

But then again, with jamón that good, who needs the bread??!!

Hey! I just fixed myself, and been savouring, a hearty brunch with the remaining makings of "pan amb tumaquets', what outside of Catalonia we call "pan tumaca') from last night's feast.
The bread was stale, since it was yesterday's; but there is a super-simple trick that I'm sure the majority of you use to warm and soften up pastries, cakes, pies, bread in general; I just put it in the microwave, along with a little container, a glass or whatever, with water for 2-3 minutes at the lowest, or at “defrosting”, temperature and….Voila!, hydrated again and back to (almost) perfect! So no worries….
Becks, yesterday, our mutual friend Candy finally came over to Casa Pim to take the pending “how to make a tortilla de patata” class; I must say our large 6 eggs-tortilla (her first!) was a success, we made it with onion, of course, and decided to add some zucchini/courgette at the last minute for some “extra-taste” (my late grandma's recipe, BTW). Then, Adrian, you know him too, showed up and took over the easy part….eating it! Too bad he's a vegetarian so he didn't try our pan tumaca, for which we toasted the slices of bread loaf, added a few drops of olive oil, rubbed the tomato, the garlic and placed the jamón Serrano on top….mmmmm!

Anyways, back to stale bread and Spanish people; I know one person, my grandpa, who's always preferred his bread "duro'; he says he got to like it back when he was a poor kid in the pre-war years.

My Mom used to use pan duro to make Migas. She would cut chunks of ham or chorizo, saute them them in some olive oil with onions, garlic and raisins, and butter for richness. Ooooooohhhhh sooooooo gooooooooood!!!!!!