Tip of the Day: Keeping Bread Fresh

Despite the low-carb diet craze of recent years, I still eat lots of bread. Who doesn't? Proof of bread's fundamental importance to our diet can be found in many old sayings: "Give us this day our daily bread," or "Breaking bread" or "That's our bread and butter." However, if you don't keep your bread properly, you can lose a loaf to staleness or to mold. So what's the best way to store bread?

Take bread out of the plastic bag, and store it in a paper bag at room temperature. As water molecules evaporate slowly from the staling bread, a plastic bag will only collect the moisture on the surface of the bread and encourage the growth of molds, the blueish-green or gray-white circles we've all noticed on a week-old loaf. Keeping bread in paper bag at room temperature will allow the bread to transpire a little, without promoting staling like the cold environment of a refrigerator.

I haven't baked any bread lately, so I'll close with the most recent photo I have- the challah I baked for Thanksgiving dinner. This type of homemade bread will especially benefit from a paper bag storage rather than a plastic bag. (Or you could just eat any leftovers the next morning as french toast, like we did ;-)