DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I saw a loaf of bread in a friend’s refrigerator the other day. What a terrible fate for a good loaf of bread, I thought. I’m happy it wasn’t one of mine.

Here is all you need to know about storing bread: the fastest way to make it stale is to store it in the refrigerator. Leave it on the counter, or freeze it, but do not refrigerate it. And for gosh sakes, never microwave it.

In his seminal food-science book On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee explains that the staling process is dependent on temperature:

It proceeds most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing, and very slowly below freezing. In one experiment, bread stored at 46°F (7°C), a fairly typical refrigerator temperature, staled as much in one day as bread held at 86°F (30°C) did in six.

What is staling, anyway? It is the “retrogradation of amylopectin,” of course. I’m surprised you had to ask.

The important thing isn’t to understand the process so much as to know how to prevent it, and how to recover from it. My best recommendation for preventing staling is to eat bread fresh, within two hours of baking. This approach works for me 100% of the time — my bread never goes stale.

If you do have to save bread, wrap it tightly and store it either at room temperature (good for 3-4 days generally) or freeze it. To prepare it for consumption, you’ll need to heat it to 140° to re-gelatinize the starches, which temporarily reverses the staling process. The easiest way to do this is to slice the bread, spritz the slices with water if you have a spritzer available, and warm the slices in the toaster for a minute or two. Warning: if your only spritzer is ordinarily used for plants, you might want to make sure there’s no plant food in it before you hose down your toast.

If you want to heat an entire loaf, wrap it in foil and bake it for 10-20 minutes at 300°-350° F. Optionally, slice the bread first and push pats of butter between slices. Take care to wrap the loaf and set it on a cookie sheet so it doesn’t dribble butter in your oven.