How To Keep Bread From Getting Soggy In French Onion Soup

Soggy bread in French onion soup does not have to be an inevitable part of the dining experience. Those first few bites of French onion soup are particularly divine, until your bread has soaked up half the liquid in your bowl. From there, you're forced to navigate a texture that is a sensory nightmare. Somewhere between a blob of wet bread and mushy onions, the joy of French onion soup fades quickly ... but it doesn't have to. Whether you're using canned soup or making it from scratch, these tips are bound to help you out. 

We have cooked up a couple of tips for you to lengthen the life of the bead on top of your French onion soup. One of the easiest ways to stop bread from soaking up everything around it is to pop it in the oven on the broil setting, long enough to toast it. Toasting your bread is a tried-and-true method to stop sandwiches from becoming soggy, and the same concept can be applied here. More time will pass before the bread fully soaks up all your soup because it's harder than normal. 

Speaking of harder bread, have you considered making homemade croutons instead of using straight up bread? Store bought croutons are usually tougher than hard plastic and would likely be able to maintain their crunch without faltering in the slightest, but that would be a little too crunchy for our taste. Homemade croutons are simple to make with stale or fresh bread. Cut up slices of bread and toss them in oil or butter before baking in the oven. Croutons made from home are tough compared to straight up toast, without being rock solid like the grocery store variants.

One final tip to consider that might be a bit blasphemous is this, don't put your bread directly into the soup. Rather than adding bread before the cheese, switch the two ingredients around. Placing your bread on top of the cheese before broiling means that the bread gets toasted while cheese is melting. The best part of this somewhat unconventional method is that your bread won't actually touch the soup until you push it into the broth by traveling through the cheese. Find out the best cheese to use for your French onion soup, and try out these tips for avoiding soggy French onion soup bread to nail down your favorite.