Instructions

1. Make sure the bread cubes are dry all the way through before they go into the mix. A cube that is merely stale will mould in the bag and take the whole batch with it.
2. Toss the bread, celery, onion, poultry seasoning, parsley, sage, thyme, salt and pepper in a bowl wide enough that nothing spills. The herbs are fine and sift straight to the bottom of anything narrow.
3. Bag the dry mix with an oxygen absorber and press the air out. Sealed that way it sits in a pantry for a year; in a plain bag the dried herbs lose their smell within a couple of months.
4. On the day, heat the oven to 375 °F while the bread takes up the butter. A cold start gives the eggs time to set before the bread has absorbed anything.
5. Pour the melted butter over the dry mix and toss until every cube has a sheen. Butter first is what stops the bread turning to mush when the broth arrives.
6. Add the beaten eggs and toss again, then stir the broth through. The eggs are the binder and they need to be on the bread rather than floating in the liquid.
7. Let it stand for ten minutes before it goes into the dish. Dried bread drinks slowly, and stuffing that goes in still dry ends up wet at the bottom and hard on top.
8. Press it into a deep casserole dish and leave the surface uneven. The peaks are what crisp; a smoothed top bakes into a uniform soft slab.
9. Bake until a thermometer pushed into the centre reads 165 °F and the top has browned. Leftovers keep three days in the fridge and reheat better covered, since the crust is already made.