The Best Way To Keep Bread Fresh

Few things are worse than watching a perfectly good loaf of bread go to waste because you couldn't eat it fast enough. After a few days on the counter, your once fresh bread is now hard as a rock. Bits of mold are starting to appear, and the next place that bread is going is in the trash. What a tragedy. So, is there a magic potion that stops it from becoming stale? Unfortunately no, but there are ways to keep bread fresh longer.

David Norman, the Culinary Director of Easy Tiger, a popular bakery and beer garden in Austin, Texas, says that if possible, you should purchase a whole loaf when buying bread, not one that has already been sliced. Buying sliced bread immediately puts you one step behind as it significantly reduces a bread's shelf life (via Huffington Post). 

If buying whole bread is out of the question, there's still hope. Once you bring a loaf home, keep out only enough bread that you think you'll eat over a two or three day period, wrap it in plastic, and store it on the counter away from windows or any direct sunlight. Take the remaining bread and place it in the freezer. That may not sound too appetizing, but Sift Magazine's Food Editor, Susan Reid, tells Insider that once you place the frozen bread in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, the bread will be fresh as can be. 

Don't let being able to freeze bread trick you, though. Freezing bread is much different than putting it in the refrigerator. Just like bread lovers can make some big bread-making mistakes, they sometimes commit this bread storing no-no, too. Storing bread in the refrigerator actually speeds up the process of your bread going stale. The water within the bread moves from the inside to the outside faster when placed in the refrigerator, making the inside of the bread tough and causing the crust to lose its crispness. 

Pretty straightforward, right? Only a couple extra steps needed once you arrive home from the grocery store, and your days of throwing out half-eaten loaves of stale bread will be far behind you.