In general, staling can be reversed somewhat by reheating the bread to a sufficient temperature (140☏ / 60☌), but it can’t completely reverse the effects of staling, and the results from heating will only last a short time. Other processes begin to take effect with the crust as well, as it begins drawing moisture out from the crumb into itself, making the crust rugged and leathery. This retrogradation means a hardening of the crumb as moisture moves out from the starches, eventually taking a loaf of bread from soft and pliable to excessively hard and what we identify as stale. From this point on, the crust and crumb begin to harden over time as starch (and most significantly, amylopectin 2) undergo retrogradation, a re-ordering into a crystalline form. When the baked loaf is removed from the oven, it cools. When they gelatinize, they swell from the moisture in the dough, and their rigid, crystalline structure transforms into a non-crystalline (amorphous) form (very similar to when you make a tangzhong or yudane). But what happens behind the scenes when the dough is baked, left to cool, and on its way to staleness?Īs bread dough is baking, the starch granules (which wheat flour primarily consists of) gelatinize. The science: from baking to stalingīefore we get into solutions for the best way to store bread, we should first briefly talk about stale bread: no one’s favorite, unless we’re making French toast, ribollita, bruschetta, or bread crumbs and croutons, of course. Beside this beautiful loaf is my best bread knife for slicing sourdough bread. These acids also help prevent molding, and in my experience (and also that of the WSU Bread Lab), they usually keep a loaf perfectly edible for a week or more-all without any chemical preservatives. The acidification of the dough by lactic acid bacteria in our sourdough starter and other physical-chemical changes during the breadmaking process help protect against premature bread firming and drying. One of the beautiful things about sourdough bread is it will last longer before staling and molding than commercially yeasted bread 1. But after baking (and eating), there’s still the task of storing the bread, to try and keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible.

This may seem like a mundane post to some, but it’s one of the most common questions I receive: what is the best way to store bread after baking it? And really, it makes sense: we spend considerable time fussing about with our sourdough starter, preparing a levain, mixing dough, and tending to it for hours-and finally, all our work culminates in the oven.

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