Homemade bread – 9 tips and tricks to keep your bread fresh for longer

How to recognize if your bread has gone bad?

Stale bread can be identified by the dryness, texture and taste of the bread., or through the presence of mold in the bread.

1. Mold. Mold is a collection of fungus which appear as fuzzy or hairy spots that are most often white, green, black or pink (depending on the strain). Mold is present everywhere in the form of spores which can settle on a nutrient-rich spot which contains moisture and blooms from there. If you see mold on your bread, do not attempt to smell it, just throw it way. This occurs more often in store-bought sandwich bread.
2. Odor. An unpleasant odor can be smelt long before mold becomes visible. While the mold may be too microscopic for the eye to spot, the chemicals they give off are easily discovered and our aversion to these is an evolutionary defense mechanism.
3. Taste. Moldy bread will taste odd and unpleasant, somewhat minerally and oddly tangy. We have evolved to recognize mold by taste and just throw the bread away.
4. Texture. Old or stale bread, especially artisanal or traditional bread will lose moisture as it ages, which keeps it safe from mold but renders the bread unpleasant.

How do baking styles affect the shelf life of your bread?

Baking styles will affect the amount of moisture and the permeability of the crust, thereby affecting the shelf-life of your bread. Some common guidelines include:

• Sandwich/loaf style breads tend to have a soft crumb and an extremely porous, almost non-existent crust, especially when prepared commercially. This allows moisture to escape and and mold to establish a foothold as the crevices in the crust become ideal spore breeding grounds. These seem to be the most likely to develop mold.
• Shokkupan/Hokkaido/Tang Zhong style breads are related to store-bought sandwich loaves and are prepared using a cooked wheat base which retains moisture for longer. This helps keep the bread feeling fresher for longer.
• Artisanal / traditional loaves form the last category. While broad, a certain fraction of this type of bread has a similarly thin and porous crust as the sandwich breads while the rest seem to inherit a harder, finer or more polished crust. This crust traps moisture better and shields the loaves better from mold. These are more likely to first develop a soft crust and then have a hard crumb as they age.

How can I Keep Homemade Bread Fresh When Reheating Steak?

Keeping homemade bread fresh when reheating steak can be a challenge, but there are some best methods for reheating steak that can also help preserve your bread. Wrapping the bread in a damp towel and reheating it in the oven with the steak can help retain its freshness and moisture.

How do flours and additives affect the shelf life of your bread?

Bread loses moisture as it goes stale. The proportion of wheat is inversely proportional to the shelf-life of the bread, with 100% wheat breads exhibiting the shortest shelf life (2 days) while breads with an increasing rye flour (9 days) content lasting longer due to better moisture retention. Whole grains provide a similar shelf-life to rye flour.

This is the same effect that you find while preparing the bread, where whole-wheat and rye breads can withstand a much higher hydration level.

Additives such as ascorbic acid will also increase the shelf-life of the bread by delaying the onset of mold. Simply add about 30mg Ascorbic acid per kg of flour right at the beginning. The idea is to change the pH of the bread, making it more acidic and therefore less hospitable for mold. Using a sourdough starter or even adding a tablespoon of vinegar has the same effect.

How does the storage container affect your bread?

Storing bread means balancing two opposite requirements. To prevent mold, good ventilation is required, but air circulation will dry out the bread faster.

1. Only store bread in paper or plastic bags for a very limited time.

Paper or plastic bags do not allow the air to circulate around the bread. In addition, any moisture that is released by the bread will remain in the bag until the bag is ventialted. This creates an ideal environment for mold to propagate faster.

better quality stores will provide their bread in a paper bag as they recognise that this will impact the shelf-life of the bread and while paper does allow the moisture from the bread to escape, the process is inefficient. Factory-made bread though will invariably come pre-packaged in plastic and will tend to be a few days old already. To compensate, they will be packed with additives to help delay the growth of mold.

Bags make sense to facilitate the transport of bread from the store to the home, and should be disposed of as soon as possible. Certainly, when baking at home, there is no need to use a bag and the shelf–life costs are such that it is better not to use a bag at all.

2. Bread lasts the longest in the bread box.

Bread boxes are specially designed to balance the ventilation and moisture retention aspects of bread storage. These can be made from wood, plastic or ceramic or even could be simple fabric bread-bags. Choosing a non-plastic option has the benefit that the box itself can absorb any excess moisture, avoiding droplets while returning this moisture to the bread as required.

While fabric bags offer the best balance of ventilation vs. water preservation, all bread boxes are designed to allow for some airflow around the bread, limiting mold growth. Storing the bread with the curt-side down also helps in preserving the bread.

Tips:

1. If you do not have a bread box, use a clean plastic container with a sealable lid and drill 5 small holes on 2 sides of the box. If you see condensation or fog on the plastic, drill a few more holes.
2. Use a dilute vinegar weekly to clean the inside of these boxes weekly to prevent mold from growing.

3. Do not store bread in the fridge.

The fridge can affect your bread in two ways:

1. Condensation leading to mold. The fridge can cause condensation to settle in your container or bag as the air temperature drops rapidly past the dew-point of the air inside the container or bag. Where these puddles of water touch your bread, mold will appear.
2. Ironically, if the container is too open, then the fridge works as a drying space, drawing moisture out of the bread, making it go stale much faster.

There is a case for using the fridge if the weather is both super-hot and humid. Then the fridge is the better option.

4. Store bread in the freezer for long periods of time.

The freezer simply stops moisture from flowing and slows down all living organisms. As no puddles of non-ice water will be present, the bread will not get as moldy as fast. Just defrost it fully on the counter-top, preferrbly on a cooling rack to avoid any moisture build-up.

5. How to best freeze your bread?

• Simply place the bread on a tray in the freezer. This removes any extra insulation layers. Once the bread is frozen transfer it to a bag or storage box.
• Freeze the bread as a whole or in slices, done properly, there is no difference.
• For shorter periods, consider a cotton bag. This will hold the bread for 2-3 weeks easily.
• For longer periods of time, up to 3 months, rather use a sturdier plastic container that can be sealed.

6.What is the best way to defrost bread?

Placing a frozen loaf straight into a hot oven will cause the bread to go hard very fast due to the extra hot time required for the center of the bread to defrost. To avoid this, let the loaf defrost on the counter-top for 2-3 hours before putting it in the oven. A brief stint, 5 minutes at 100C is all that is needed for the bread to feel and taste as good as when it was baked.

What to do if the bread has mold?

Mold is microscopic and will often only show a few signs of its presence. This means that by the time you see the mold, odds are that it has permeated the whole loaf. As many molds are actually toxic, it is best to simply dispose of the entire loaf rather than trying to cut pieces out and hoping for the best.