Learn How To Keep Your Bread Fresh by Mary Walsh

Bread must always be kept fresh. No one wants to eat stale and moldy bread. The usual thing that we do when we want to preserve the freshness of our bread would be to place them inside your fridge. While this is effective to some extent, there are actually alternative ways to maintain the good quality of breads.

A lot of people use bread bins or boxes to store their bread. Bread boxes are made up of wood, metal or plastic. Wooden boxes are said to be better when maintaining the freshness of your bread products but there's also a downside to using them. Wood can trap the moisture from the surrounding air, which can cause condensation inside your box in turn hastening the formation of mold inside your wooden box.

Putting bread inside your refrigerator or freezer is a very popular method, but there are also downsides to it as well. It's true that refrigerating will delay the formation of molding on your bread, though you must be careful not to let even a small amount of moisture from getting trapped in your box. This can accelerate mold formation instead of delaying it.

Another concern about keeping your breads freshness is when bread starts to get stale. You really cannot stop bread from going stale, no matter what storage method you use. Gluten proteins present in your bread knits back again after baking. This makes the composition of your bread a lot tougher.

Breads can become stale even refrigerated because low temperatures can actually make bread become stale faster. When breads are kept in low temperatures, starch fraction of the wheat flour undergoes some changes, which involves retro gradation or crystallization. The good thing is that the crystallization of starch will reverse by putting bread over gentle heat, which softens it.

Another way of delaying the staling of breads is using additives on it. Examples of such additives include methylcellulose or glycerol monostearate. Using prop ionic acid or other types of antimicrobial additives can partly inhibit the molding process.

Here are some tips that you can follow if you want to make your bread's freshness last long:

1. Do not wrap freshly-baked bread as soon as you get it out from your oven. You should let bread cool first before you store it. Trapped heat inside your wrapper can produce condensation, which can make your bread soggy.

2. Wrap bread with foil then place it inside any airtight Ziploc/plastic container bag before you store it inside your freezer. When you are ready to eat it, thaw your bread at room temp. and heat it inside your oven for ten minutes.