Recipes

1. The freezer

Yes, the freezer is most often used for long-term food storage, but if you want to keep your freshly-baked bread in its most perfect state, even just for a few days, the freezer is the way to go. Freezing bread greatly slows down the staling, or retrogradation, process and eliminates the risk of mold growth. And when you take bread out of the freezer you can put it right into the oven or toaster—which actually re-gelatinizes the starches and makes the bread springy and chewy again.

To freeze fresh bread, just put it in a freezer bag and push out as much air as possible before you seal it (this will help prevent freezer burn). Then pop the bag in the freezer. When you're ready to eat, take it out and put it in the oven to revive it. It is recommendsed defrosting a whole loaf of bread at 325°F until it's soft and fully thawed in the middle, which usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes.

2. A bread box

We put a fresh but fully-cooled sourdough bread loaf and half of a fresh baguette into a bread box in the open-ended paper bakery bags they came in, with the cut side of the baguette facing the sealed end of the bag. We used the paper bags mostly to avoid filling the bread box with bread crumbs, but left them open for airflow. Toward the end of the first week, both breads were still pretty soft and the crust was still crusty. After seven days it started to grow mold.

Verdict: It's no freezer, but a good breadbox will create an environment that balances humidity, which you want for a soft interior. And though it’s a fairly airtight container, there is air circulation, which you need to maintain a crusty crust. A large box is better too, because it will allow for maximum air circulation. The more bread you put in a bread box, the higher the humidity level, so don't overfill it.

3. A plastic bag

We put a sourdough loaf and half of a baguette from the same fresh batch in their own freezer bags, removed as much air as possible, and tightly sealed the bags. Then we left them on the counter for weeks. Both breads stayed soft and mold-free for an entire week but the crust of the sourdough had lost some of its crustiness. We also noticed mold growth on the sourdough in exactly one week, and the baguette started to mold shortly thereafter. By the end of two weeks, they were both still soft. Both loaves were also super moldy.

Verdict: A freezer bag is a decent short-term, room-temperature bread storage solution. Storing your bread on the countertop in a plastic bag (or well-sealed plastic wrap) will help keep it from going stale, but be warned: the crust will suffer and grow mold due to trapped moisture. Toasting the bread (if it’s too soft but not yet moldy, of course) will bring some of the crust's crunchy texture back.

4. A fancy bread bag

Food52 love the Uashmama Bread Bag, a coated paper bag that comes with a terracotta bread warmer. But after testing the fancy bread bag with the same sourdough loaf and half of a baguette, the bag seems better suited for very short-term bread storage.

The bread in the Uashmama bread bag never molded—not in the two-week testing period, and not the third week we left it there just to see what would happen. But by day six of the first week, the bread stored inside was hard as a rock, which is pretty much what we'd expect from a paper bag, even a coated one. Stale bread is preferable to moldy bread though, since it is possible to revive a stale loaf of bread.

Verdict: A fancy coated-paper bread bag can slow the bread-staling process a little but it’s not a great option for storing bread beyond a day or two.

5. A boule bread bag

In addition to the fancy coated paper bag, we put a sourdough loaf and a full baguette into boule bread bags. We loved that one of the bags was the exact size and shape of the baguette, but we might as well have left the bread out on the counter. It never got moldy but it sure did get really hard, really fast.

Verdict: Bread stales very quickly in a boule bread bag, even in warm, humid weather.

6. The counter

A crusty loaf of bread on a weathered wood cutting board may look great on Instagram, —especially if there’s a linen tea towel artfully draped nearby—but it’s a terrible way to store fresh bread, or any bread. Unlike a fully-frosted cake, bread needs to be covered, even at room temperature. So if you really don’t want to put your bread in the freezer, try the bread box or plastic bag recommended above.

Verdict: Leaving your bread on the counter makes for a nice Instagram photo of super-stale bread.

7. The fridge

The refrigerator, that miraculous 20th-century food preserver that keeps our celery crisp and our milk chilled, is actually the last place your bread belongs. According to Harold McGee, author of On Food & Cooking, refrigerating fresh bread can cause it to stale up to six times faster than bread left out on the counter. That said, the fridge is a decent place to store your store-bought bread because it will prevent mold and dryness.

Verdict: Whatever you do, don’t put your fresh bread in the fridge!

Not all breads stale the same

Because there are so many different types and styles of fresh bread, it may take a little trial and error to find the best room-temperature bread storage solution for your favorite fresh bread. Breads with added fat, like challah and brioche, will take longer to go stale, whereas a baguette—because of its narrow shape and lack of fat—is an extreme case and will go stale very rapidly. It should really be eaten the day it's baked.