Many years ago, I was enthralled with wooden bread boxes. It was all I could do to discipline myself to wait until I had enough expendable income to purchase one. After all, a bread box of any kind is really a luxury, right?
While there may be some truth to that statement, if you’re baking your own bread, you know that leaving it at room temperature in any kind of container will hasten its spoilage, especially in summer’s heat and humidity.
While storing bread in bags in the refrigerator is an obvious choice and age-old practice in my realm, it’s not the storage method I now recommend to my bread-baking peers.
Here are some reasons I decided to trade bread bags for one of today’s bread keepers:
- No matter how I tried, as I moved bread in and out of the refrigerator to use it, the bag gathered moisture. Besides spoiling several slices of bread, it greatly increased the likelihood that the bread would mold before we could use it.
- My loaves were large enough that one-gallon bags wouldn’t hold a loaf. If I wanted to avoid cutting my loaf into two or three pieces, I had to purchase two-gallon bags. Not a huge extra expense, but still an added bread-baking cost.
- Bags don’t offer the loaf any protection from whatever is stored beside them. Dented and crushed loaves did occur.
While these are hardly earth-shattering reasons to invest in a bread keeper, it seemed logical to me to take good care of my bread once I went to the trouble to bake it.
To explore the bread keeper options, you might search the Internet with key words such as, “Top 5 bread keepers 2019,” “Best bread keepers,” etc. This type of search will bring up some popular options.
My personal bread keeper choice was the Progressive Adjustable Bread Keeper. “Adjustable” was the key feature I appreciated. This item easily holds my entire fresh loaf and slides down in size as we use the bread. It also has an integrated cutting board that’s very handy. Even though it’s dishwasher safe, I prefer to rinse it out each time I use up a bread loaf. It’s clear plastic, making it very easy to see that every corner is clean and crumb-free.
I rarely store my bread at room temperature. In winter months, I may leave a freshly-baked loaf in the bread keeper on the counter overnight. Otherwise, I keep it in the refrigerator. It stays quite fresh and tasty for up to two weeks.
If you prefer to store your bread in the freezer, you can slice it, use a sheet of parchment or plastic to keep slices from freezing to each other, slide it into a plastic bag and place it in the freezer.
Long time journalist Loretta Sorensen is the author of Secrets To Baking Your Best Bread Ever! and regularly shares information about whole grains and bread baking. You’ll find her book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the Country Store at Our Dakota Horse Tales. Her weekly bread baking posts are featured at Mother Earth Living, GRIT Magazine, Our Dakota Horse Tales, and on Pinterestand Facebook.
