We get our bread from a small Italian bakery that bakes magnificent oval shaped dark brown loaves with thick crunchy crusts that leave the Supermarket bread a long way behind. It takes us about 5 days to finish a loaf, and my wife insists on sealing it in a plastic bag. Iv’e finally convinced her to use a cloth bag which hopefully keeps the crust crusty and the bread fresh. What does the dope think?
Plastic bag, or Cloth bag? Fridge or no fridge?
What about long term storage? ( 1 or 2 months) Freezer or not?
BTW, I usually toast the bread.
I don’t eat a lot of bread (maybe once every few days), so I keep my bread in the freezer and toast it when I want it. But, in my experience, bread is very susceptible to freezer burn. I don’t really care about freezer burn, but if you’re going out of the way to get special bread, you’d want to take that into account.
What a perfect thread for the foodies in Café Society. Moved from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
I think you should go with what bakeries have been using since practically forever: paper bags. They breathe slightly - enough to keep the bread crust stiff - but they can still keep most of the moisture in for a day or two.
Freezing bread is a pretty good idea, especially if you revive it in the toaster or microwave. If you wrap it in plastic, it should hold for weeks without frost burn.
My personal feelings: bread getting dry on the counter is a reminder that it’s been too long since I made french toast. 
Also, croutons, bread pudding, french onion soup, bruschetta with wet toppings, meatloaf, meatballs, and so on. Day-old bread is as much a staple for me as fresh bread is.
Paper bag and a breadbox is the most often recommended method and works for me, but I make a loaf every three days or so. My sister insists on a plastic bag but she does keep the seal open a bit - zipping it closed makes it mold super quick.
Paper bag is best, if you have a bread box too that’s even better.
I’m very interested in hearing more about this gigantic loaf of bread that takes 5 days to eat. I’m figuring it’s an oval about 3 feet by 1 1/2 feet and at least a foot tall.
The loaf of artisan bread I buy is large and my wife seldom eats bread. I use it for toast, and it lasts a week; plastic bag and refrigerator work great for my case.
Keep on counter. A day or two before I know it starts to go bad I put it in the freezer. This period of time is one that I have previously determined empirically for that specific type and/or brand of bread. Once frozen, it still makes great toast, and pretty good sandwich bread, although I toast that a little often anyway.
If you don’t eat much bread it can last and then go bad. I can tear through sourdough quickly but other types might be harder to use. For me I still go through it most of the time. In my experience it might be analogous to milk, where either it goes bad and I toss it, or I need it for something and don’t have any (I don’t drink it straight).
I haven’t found a great way for it to work in my household, to keep the cut portion soft while keeping the crust crunchy. So I resolve to just have a chewy crust, double wrap it in plastic, and keep it in the fridge. It keeps a couple weeks that way, which is how long it takes me to go through a loaf.
If I have a whole loaf of something amazing that I want to keep crusty for a couple days, I keep it in a paper bag on the counter and sacrifice a thin slice when I next use it. After a couple days, still goes in the fridge or it will go moldy before I can use it.
Bread will go stale more quickly in the refrigerator than in any other household environment. This is more noticeable in some types of breads. San Francisco sourdough goes stale pretty quickly and can be awful when it does.
Whether bread goes moldy depends on a lot of things: the moisture level, the temperature, the presence or absence of preservatives, and what the bread is stored in. If your bread tends to go moldy before you finish it, then by all means keep it in the fridge or freezer. The freezer does a better job of preserving bread, but it’s less convenient to deal with frozen bread. If you don’t have problems with mold, you’ll get better results by storing bread in paper on the counter.
BTW, you can revive a stale loaf by heating it in the oven. Staling happens when the starch granules in the bread release their moisture into the spaces in the bread. Heating causes the granules to re-absorb the moisture. It can help to spray water on the stale bread before putting it into the oven.
Thanks, some good tips, Sometimes my attempts at freezing have been a bit hit and miss, so Ill try the oven trick.
I keep it in the freezer – only takes about 10 minutes for two pieces to thaw, and I rarely have a sandwich emergency that would necessitate nuking or toasting it. I go through a loaf in a week or two, so freezer burn isn’t a problem.
Also, my new favourite salad, panzanella.