How To Store Homemade Bread For Maximum Freshness
After you've found or created your bread starter, applied Julia Child's dough-smacking technique, waited through multiple proofs, and painstakingly scored a beautiful pattern in your loaf, it can be rather deflating when your homemade bread starts to go stale too soon.
It sounds ridiculous and looks kinda funny, but for hard-shelled loaves, like sourdough, the exterior crust will actually keep out the air that would otherwise start the staling process for the soft crumb within. Now, this will work for a few days at most, but then you might want to move the bread to a paper bag — or, if you bake a lot of bread, an old-fashioned bread box. Keep it cut-side down.
If you have freshly baked a softer loaf, like brioche, on the other hand, you can wrap it with plastic wrap or aluminum foil, and it will last on your counter for up to five days. The reason it keeps longer than a sourdough or other hard-crusted bread is that it tends to include fattier ingredients, such as milk and butter, which help it retain moisture.
More storage tips for keeping bread fresh
Once the time is up for the cut-side down method for your bread, if you don't have a bread box, you might be tempted to store your bread — as many do — in a plastic bag. However, this isn't the best place to keep it, as plastic isn't the most breathable material, and the moisture that builds up inside it can cause your bread to spoil and get moldy faster. As an alternative to both plastic bags and bread boxes, you can instead surround your loaves, of all kinds, with what's known as beeswax wrap. The wraps — like this adorable set from BYTTME — are reusable, and they allow your bread to breathe while maintaining the texture and firmness of the loaf.
What you should not do is keep your homemade bread in the refrigerator, as the environment in this appliance is meant to zap moisture away — not great for bread, which can go stale much more quickly. Instead, if you want your bread to last up to three months, you can keep it in the freezer. Pre-slice it, wrap it up in a layer of aluminum foil or plastic wrap, and then place it in a zip-top freezer bag. This way, you can remove as many slices as you want and then put them directly in the toaster; it also allows you to leave out part of the loaf to eat fresh for a few days, and save the rest to eat over the next three months.
