The preservation of bread


The preservation of bread
Eating fresh bread is always a delight, the crust crumbles deliciously, you take full advantage of the taste of your bread (80% of this taste is in the crust), it is a fleeting moment to enjoy.
Who hasn't already eaten the crouton or croutons of his baguette, on the way back from the bakery?

Unfortunately, after a few hours, it gets a bit spoiled, the bread naturally softens, and later on it dries out again.

Let's see what happens and how to try to limit it.
14 K 4.7/5 (14 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:BreadPreservationBakingBagCanvasCottonLinenCrustCrumb
Last modified on: June 11th 2022
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
The preservation of bread

Out of the oven

pain bien cuit

The bread is unbaked, it leaves the oven which is at 250°C approximately, and will wait on a rack or a grid a few minutes before going on the shelves, it is what the bakers call "ressuage".
It cools down slowly, especially if it is a big piece, and for the moment it remains crispy, no secret it is the best time to taste it!

With time comes the staling

Then, as time goes by, some of the moisture that is contained in the heart of the bread by the cooking, will slowly migrate from the crumb (center) to the crust (periphery), it does not change its taste, but the crust softens and the initial crispness goes away...
You can't do anything against that, it's in the order of things in baking, but note that it's not as fast on a well or very well baked bread, as on a poorly or under baked one.
It must even happen, in time, the bread must evacuate some of its water otherwise it becomes elastic.
This softening is also accentuated by a poor quality of bread (flours, workmanship, fermentation), you may have already seen those tragic undercooked and softened baguettes, with which it is possible to tie a knot without breaking it.

But no bread escapes it, that's how it starts to stale more or less quickly: It ends up losing almost all its internal moisture to become dry.

pain rassi



What to do?

As I said, we cannot prevent, but we can limit, a little, the staling in time, here are some tracks:

- I have already mentioned it, but it is important to remember, a well baked bread will keep longer than a bread that is not
- A sourdough bread will keep better and longer than a yeast bread
- A well-baked sourdough bread, even better.
- Once the bread has cooled down (this is very important), you can store it in something closed, the ancients used a bread bin, a kind of wooden box lined with cloth, and we would tend to use a plastic bag now.

It's a mistake to use a plastic bag, because it keeps your bread soft, but it quickly becomes rubbery, and your bread needs to breathe anyway.
A much better solution is a canvas bag (cotton, linen...), it keeps your bread in good conditions, letting it breathe without letting it completely dry as if it was in the open air.

sac à pain

You can buy one of course, but if you know how to saw, which I don't, a cotton bread bag is (I'm told) a pretty easy thing to do.

Dry bread?

If you find yourself with dry bread one day, don't throw it away, in fact we should never throw away bread, it was just unthinkable with my grandparents' generation.
Here are a few ways to use it anyway:

- There is dry and dry, put it in the toaster, and what you thought was dry might become soft enough for a breakfast sandwich
- Dry enough? Make French toast out of it, or quiche, or croutons
- Too dry? Turn it into homemade breadcrumbs


To sum up: Staling and drying of bread is normal, but you can limit staling by storing bread in a canvas bag (not plastic).

Lasts posts
Oven height
Oven height
When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8th 20251,2105
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20256,7633
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20256,1995
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20256,3125
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20254,4515

Other pages you may also like
Different kinds of pastry and dough
Different kinds of pastry and dough
When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .
November 6th 2012111 K 14.0
Stand mixer tools
Stand mixer tools
Whether we call it a stand mixer, food processor, or simply refer to it by brand (Kenwood, KitchenAid, etc.), this machine is a valuable tool for amateur cooks, bakers or pastry chefs like ourselves. All these machines come supplied with 3 different tools. Let’s take a look at their names and...
November 2nd 201937 K4.5
Croutons
Croutons
Do you use croutons, that typically French trick of toasting small pieces of bread on the side to add to a recipe? They're just delicious, but you need to know 2 or 3 things about them. .
December 30th 20209,7675
How to break eggs properly?
How to break eggs properly?
It is a very common gesture in pastry, bakery and of course cooking: breaking eggs to incorporate them into a recipe. You have eggs (which professionals call "shell eggs" to differentiate them from liquid eggs in cartons or cans), and you must break them to incorporate the contents into your...
June 26th 202114 K4.8
The return of the "Norman hole"
The return of the "Norman hole"
You maybe know the "trou normand", this old gastronomic custom typically French which consists in taking a (small) glass of calvados, generally between the last course and the dessert? It's something that seems a bit anachronistic nowadays, having a glass of an alcohol of more than 60° in the...
December 18th 202114 K4.8
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page