Bread crumbs

A description of the trail you took to arrive at your current location. Breadcrumbs are common on Web sites to help you navigate the site. For example, a simple text breadcrumb such as Products->Monitors->Flat Panel shows that you arrived at this page by first clicking Products, then Monitors, and finally Flat Panel.

The term stems from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. When their father took them into the woods to abandon them, the brother and sister dropped crumbs of bread along the way to leave a trail back home. See Vista breadcrumbs.

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1. Debugging statements inserted into a program that emit output or log indicators of the program's state to a file so you can see where it dies or pin down the cause of surprising behavior. The term is probably a reference to the Hansel and Gretel story from the Brothers Grimm or the older French folktale of Thumbelina; in several variants of these, a character leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as not to get lost in the woods.

2. In user-interface design, any feature that allows some tracking of where you've been, like coloring visited links purple rather than blue in Netscape (also called footprinting).

For other uses, see Bread crumbs (disambiguation).

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

Breadcrumbs

A bag of Japanese panko breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs or bread crumbs (regional variants: breading, crispies) are small particles of dry bread, which are used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thickening stews, and adding inexpensive bulk to meatloaves and similar foods. They are documented in cookbooks as early as 1716.^[1] They are often confused with croutons, however are much smaller in size, akin to the size of common ants.

However, the crumb of bread also refers to the inner soft part, as distinguished from the crust, or "skin".

Dry breadcrumbs are made from very dry bread which has been baked or toasted to remove all remaining moisture, and may have a sandy or even powdery texture. They can be used to make a crisp and crunchy coating for fried foods (see breading). The breads used to make soft or fresh bread crumbs are not quite as dry, so the crumbs are larger and produce a softer coating, crust, or stuffing. Bread crumbs are most easily produced by pulverizing slices of bread in a food processor, using a steel blade to make coarse crumbs, or a grating blade to make fine crumbs. A grater or similar tool will also do.

See also

• Breading
• Panko
• Crouton
• Stuffing
• Bread

References

1. ^ The Philosophical Transactions and Collections, to the End of the Year 1700, by Royal Society (Great Britain), John Lowthorp, Henry Jones, John Eames, John Martyn Edition: 2, vol. 2, Printed by M. Mathews for R. Knaplock, R. Wilkin, and H. Clements, 1716

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