I will spontaneously decide I want a sandwich, so freezing is a no go for me.
Have you tried putting half the loaf into the fridge until later in the week?
I also am not a fan of bread from the fridge, yuck. But I know what you mean about it going quickly moldy. This solution worked for me: Put half the loaf in the fridge while you use up the first half. When you get down to the last couple of pieces pull out the fridge bread and let it warm up to room temperature, over the next day.
I noticed that and I also read another post to the same effect; nonetheless, although I have noticed mold on a few occasions, by that time the bread was stale anyway: usually about a week. The mold is not harmful, anyway. Isn’t that how penicillin was discovered?
Penicillin is not the only mold that forms on bread.
Serious answer: my neighbor and I split a loaf. That way no spoiled bread and I only have to go to the store every other time.
Another freezer user. With practice, it’s easy to thaw in a microwave at 50% power. Or, as others have said, in a toaster oven or on the counter.
One thing. What happens to bread in the fridge isn’t spoilage. It’s staling, i.e., getting stale. At fridge temps, the starch molecules tend to retrograde more rapidly than a room temp, i.e., crystallize and expel moisture. See Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking (2d ed. 2004) at p.542. He also recommends freezing.
Forgot to mention. When thawing bread by microwave it’s essential (in my experience) to put the bread on a paper towel. Otherwise, steam from the defrost will puddle in the dish, making the bread soggy. With a paper towel, 50% power and using just enough time to warm the bread, it works quite well.
I don’t know about the quality of bread in your area, or what type storage container you use. Here, with real sourdough bread (from organic flour) baked in a wood oven (Hofpfisterei loaves) there are the following options:
- the special paper the bread is sold in the store. It’s coated with perforated plastic on one side, to let the bread breathe, because (as said upthread) moisture = mold.
The downside is: too much breathing = bread turns hard like rock.
-
A cloth bag. Same as first option.
-
An earthen jar (sold in the Hofpfisterei stores in the right dimensions.) Regularly washed out with hot acid water (to prevent the spread of spores mentioned already) it should prevent both mold and drying out.
Personally, I’d try experimenting a bit. If your bread turns moldy usually (and after you’ve washed the surfaces), I’d go for the more-breathing route. If you notice that your bread dries and hardens, wrap a bit of plastic around it again.
Maybe you need to alternate, one day of drying, one day of plastic, to get the optimum.
Or buy smaller loaves that you can eat in 2-3 days? They shouldn’t dry that fast.
Forgot to add: Anecdotally, Russians used flour- and breadboxes made from the rind of the birch tree, because that contained anti-something (anti-fungal? Anti-bacterial?) stuff made by the birch tree. I dimly remember that this was tested and found to be sort of true, but don’t know how much this works out compared to other storage methods (or how difficult it is for you to get those boxes).
Tupperware has a special bread container where the bread sits on a little rost so it can give off humidity without areas of high moisture + no air= mold. I think that works better than a normal plastic box.
As for putting bread in the fridge: that sounds barbaric. What terrible kind of bread do you have that you would subject it to that? Even with that soft spongy stuff for sandwiches, that’s wrong.
(Freezing good sourdough bread because you just bought a whole 2kg loaf cheaply and can’t eat it in the next 4 days, yes. That’s different).
I store my home-made bread in plastic grocery bags. The ones that you bring your groceries home in.
It seems to keep my bread much fresher for longer than any other method I’ve found, though I haven’t tried any “specialty methods.”
IIRC, the penicillium of the discovery formed on agar plates that were being used to study other microorganisms, not on bread.
i was unaware that mold grew faster at 40 degrees than at room temperature.
I didn’t say it got moldy, I send it goes bad faster.
Cooks Illustrated did a piece on bread storage –
According to food scientists, the major
reason that bread stales is not moisture loss, but rather a process
called retrogradation, in which the starch molecules in the bread
crystallize. Retrogradation occurs about six times faster at
refrigerator temperatures (36 - 40 F) than at room temperature,
thereby making the refrigerator the worst choice for bread storage.
However, the retrogradation process does slow down significantly when
bread is stored below freezing temperatures.