The Best Bread Box Is a Freezer
Bread can quickly become moldy and stale, but storing it properly can largely prevent these problems entirely. I’m not talking about storing your loaf in one of those aesthetically pleasing wooden bread bins. While they provide useful barriers, if, say, you have a carb-loving cat like I do, they do little to prevent mold colonies from forming. Countertop bread bins are fancy, but the best bread bin is actually a freezer one.
Keep it fit
Luckily, many foods keep well in the freezer. Unfortunately, this makes my freezer a bit like a clown car – it’s crammed with a staggering and slightly alarming amount of stuff, but there’s always room for more. This in itself is a good thing: the freezer maintains temperature and saves energy, but it can cause problems for the delicate shape of soft, airy bread.
Because the bread is made up of many small, beautifully spaced air pockets, the shape creases easily. If you jam him in with the rest of the clowns, he’ll freeze in that broken form and stay that way even after thawing. For the sake of the bread, first freeze it unshredded for 30 minutes before tucking it away. Place soft bread, such as muffins, scones or cookies, on a baking sheet so that nothing is on it. Once they have hardened, you can pack them in any convenient place. Or even better…
Bread houses worth paying attention to:
Create a home for your bread
Anyone who likes to eat a slice or two every day has earned Bread Spot status. You should make a designated place in your freezer for bread that will store only your precious loaves. While I don’t think a traditional, airtight countertop bread bin would be useful, a freezer-safe container to isolate the bread from other things works well. Just make sure you don’t forget about it in the back of the freezer.
For irregularly shaped artisan breads such as boules or batards, wrap tightly and place in a wide plastic tub-like container that fits on the top shelf of the freezer. Something like this Komax storage container will do the trick. Is it marketed as a freezer safe pet food container? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you should use it as pet food. For a family that enjoys sliced sandwich bread, you may want to consider using a long tube container designed specifically for the job.
Prevent freezer burn
To be clear, freezers are a boon for preserving food at home and effectively reducing waste, but this wonderful machine comes with a trade-off: freezer burn. Although your food is protected from mold growth caused by moisture, freezer burn can happen to anything you put in there if it contains moisture, including bread.
You’ve probably seen this before. You discover a piece of chicken or steak that’s been sitting in the freezer, only to unwrap it and find an icy piece of foil and discolored, dried-out meat inside. The bread slice looks pale and dry and has ice crystals accumulated on the surface or inside the storage bag. This is the visual result of sublimation , where ice turns directly into water vapor. The freezer maintains a dry, cold environment and, as BBC Science Focus explains, “the ice sublimates in an attempt to equalize the [vapour] pressure of the air in the freezer.”
It’s technically safe to eat frozen burnt food, but the flavor and texture may suffer, and for me that defeats the whole point of eating. To prevent freezer burn, minimize food exposure to dry, circulating freezer air. Wrapping made from foil or thin flexible plastic, bread bags, and some zip-lock bags are porous or tear easily. Essentially, they are not airtight.
If you feel like your food is prone to freezer burn, invest in durable, airtight containers, freezer-safe bags (usually thicker than others), or try double-folding them. This also helps remove air from inside the container if possible. While this is not possible with rigid materials, you can do it with freezer bags. Store your sliced sandwich bread in the same bag it came in, squeeze out all the air (carefully), tie it up, and insert it into one of the tight-fitting storage tubes. This can be especially useful if you are likely to be storing the bread for several months. (That’s me. Guilty.) Once your bread is safely tucked away in its new frozen kingdom, you’ll be able to defrost and toast your carbs at will, no longer worrying about moldy slices or stale cookies.