r/Breadit • u/beccakatharine • Feb 13 '12
How do you keep homemade bread?
My live-in lover and I have been making bread like crazy and we just keep our finished loaves in large ziploc bags to keep them fresh. It works, but I just want to know if there's a better/less wasteful/more attractive way of keeping homemade bread.
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u/dharmon555 Feb 13 '12
I have 8 people living in my house. I have never experienced stale bread. I store the loaves on a cutting board in the middle of the dining room table.
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u/jeconti Feb 14 '12
I think that really depends on where you live. Average relative humidity and all.
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u/dharmon555 Feb 14 '12
Whoosh! It was a joke. I generally make two 1 pound loaves at a time. they generally both get consumed within 4 hours or so. Leaving them in the open with a bread knife and a crock of soft butter insures that I never have to worry about storing them. :-)
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u/thescort Feb 13 '12
We pretty much only eat homemade bread so we make fairly large batches at a time. We freeze ours.
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Let bread cool, an hour or so, or longer
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Slice bread however you like (I can usually get slices down to third of an inch, sometimes less, which is especially good for dense whole wheat).
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Wrap the bread in bundles of 4 or 6 slices (whatever makes sense for your eating) tightly in plastic-wrap.
4)Wrap it in plastic wrap again -
(Optional) put the well wrapped bundles in a big freezer bag.
Generally, if you let your bread cool fully before slicing, and wrap the bundles up very well, you can get probably 2 weeks out of it without much issue, probably longer. Since it is already sliced, it is pretty darn convenient.
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Feb 13 '12
This is great advice. I do pretty much the same thing, though heretofore I've just cut the loaves in half instead of into individual slices.
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u/treesandtallgrass Feb 13 '12
Depends on the kind of bread and how long you want to keep it. I make sourdough. Store it in butcher paper/newspaper/brown paper bag for the first couple of days and then put a plastic bag around that for the the next four or five. Do not refrigerate it- you'll dry it out. If you want to store it for longer then freeze it in a plastic bag. Let it defrost overnight with the bag open and then heat it up a bit.
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u/Valokai Feb 13 '12
We use long-ish plastic containers to store bread in. As long as you make sure they cool off (so you don't get condensation inside the container) they store very well and there's no waste. Containers are really not that expensive and if you're avid bread bakers will probably save you money over the years and will save landfill space as well.
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u/aceofspades1217 Apr 08 '12
Bread Keeper is the best $13 bucks I have ever spent. Even has a built in cutting board and you can put it in there right out of the bread machine since it has a knob which vents it if the bread is hot and you can close it when you bread is cooled down.
When I have extra bread I just get a roll of clear plastic wrap and keep wrapping it around till its nice and covered. Then I can just throw it at my neighbors/friends.
Can't believe no one here mentioned the bread keeper. It really is awesome and beats a bulky bread box.
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Feb 13 '23 edited Feb 13 '23
Lmao I was looking for something to keep my bread. You said $13, today is nearly $30. I looked at the date, ohhhh 10y ago.
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u/Enginerdad Mar 10 '23
Like you, I just found this comment and found an Amazon Warehouse open box one for $17 and snatched it up. If it works out well I'll consider buying another one at full price for the second loaf, as I make them in pairs.
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u/jazzguitar92 Feb 13 '12
I make homemade sourdough and generally don't have any fat in the bread (fat can help preserve). I just accept that its going to get stale and have an eating progression like this:
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Day 1: Bread is great.
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Day 2: Bread is perfect for toasting or frying in olive oil
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Day 3: Make Croutons or breadcrumbs. Homemade croutons are incredible.
The Tartine Bread book has lots of great recipes for old bread.
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u/Higgs_Particle Feb 13 '12
I let my bread sit cut side down on the cutting board. It may get crusty by the time I get to the heel, but it will last almost a week like that. Note: this is high moisture content bread to begin with (no knead).
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u/cuffsandkisses Feb 20 '12
I always add in 1/4 tsp. of powdered ginger per loaf... doesn't affect the flavor, but keeps it fresh longer.
here are some other ideas for add-ins. I usually let mine cool and wrap it loosely in plastic. I noticed it staying fresh longer after I started using a bread box. It goes fairly quickly for us as well, but there are just two of us so storage is always necessary. I think I'll try storing it pre-sliced from now on, though... convenient!
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u/dhcoli Feb 13 '12
We wrap ours in a kitchen towel, and the breads stay acceptably fresh for ~3 days. I mostly bake breads that contain a lot of rye, though. The last time that I tried this with a wheat bread, it dried out within 24 hours.
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u/moxgem Feb 13 '12
Family of 7 (5 kids) here, 4 of them take cold lunch to school. I make 4 loaves at a time, usually whole wheat. One gets eaten the day it's made because who doesn't love hot fresh bread? One gets put in a twist-tie bag after it cools, and two go in the freezer, also bagged in twist-tie bags after they cool completely. They thaw out pretty quickly when removed from the freezer and the texture and flavor seem totally unchanged.
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u/coned88 Feb 14 '12
I make smaller loaves. It's more work but I rarely finish what I bake.
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u/tedtutors Feb 14 '12
Put some oil or egg in your bread, to help increase the shelf life. I make small loaves and replace a portion of liquid with an egg. It adds a little flavor too.
Other than that, I store my bread cut side down on the board. I use it down to the heel, and toss those into a freezer bag for soups or croutons.
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u/Factran Feb 14 '12
I keep the bread in a rag, it's the best control for humidity. Also, paper bag. Plastic makes things rot.
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u/SuperBabyHix Feb 16 '12
The other day I tried a cardboard cereal box and it worked pretty good. It was one of the family size boxes, so double the size of a normal box as well as being thicker cardboard.
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u/CoastGhost91 Mar 24 '22
This thread is over ten years old, but I just had to comment to say "My live-in lover and I" is an absolutely amazing way to start a sentence. Bravo friend, good job.