Not the fridge—here’s why.
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At least once a week, you can find me at the farmers market with a basket full of the usual suspects—luscious strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, vibrant leafy greens, plus something you may not necessarily think of when you consider the farmers market: bread.
I love supporting the local bakers of Richmond, Virginia, and we’re blessed to have some of the best, including the James Beard Award semifinalist, Sub Rosa Bakery that pops up at our Tuesday market each week.
Their bread is made from hand-milled, locally grown grains, and it’s a thing of beauty that should be handled properly. So when I heard Paul Hollywood talking about the best way to store bread on TikTok, I was delighted that his advice was in line with my regular habit of storing my treasures on the counter in a paper bag.
Paul references the common idea that putting bread in the refrigerator is best. According to the pro baker, that’s a big no-no because it pulls the moisture out of the bread, making it go stale more quickly.
I already knew the fridge wasn’t ideal, but I was curious if wrapping the bread in plastic wrap would be beneficial, so I reached out to my former Johnson and Wales Culinary Instructor and a true god of gluten, Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and 11 other books on bread and pizza.
“Storing crusty hearth bread is very different from storing soft sliced bread for which plastic bags or plastic wrap is ideal,” Reinhart explained via email. “Hearth bread, which has little or no fat in it, will begin losing its crisp crust and creamy interior within hours due to ‘retrogradation of the starches’—that is, the creamy gelatinized starches in the freshly baked loaf soon begin to revert back into starch crystals and taste dry and starchy. This is what staling is.”
If you’ve passed the peak freshness window on your loaf of bread and are staring down a stale loaf, Reinhart says all is not lost. “Staling can be reversed by tossing the loaf into a hot oven (425°F) for about four or five minutes. This will temporarily regelatinize the starches, re-crisp the crust, and restore the sense of a freshly baked loaf,” he notes. “However, once it cools, it will rapidly retrograde again and taste even more starchy and dry due to evaporation of the remaining moisture.”
Reinhart says, on this one, Paul is exactly right. For storing bread for around 24 hours, a paper sack at room temperature is ideal. “If [storing] for longer than that, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and freeze it, allowing about two hours to thaw before returning the loaf to the hot oven as described above.”
