Completely cooled, wrapped tight it will freeze very nicely. Will last a couple months easily and maybe more.

I ALWAYS have homemade loaves of bread in the freezer. I just put 2 loaves in there yesterday.

I use the same method cynic uses. I wrap the loaves tightly in plastic wrap, then aluminum foil - the foil is an additional insulator and helps keep the plastic wrap from falling off (I reuse the foil on loaves over and over). The close/tight wrapping of plastic wrap will aid in keeping air from surrounding the loaf (air is your enemy when storing food in the freezer).

The tight wrapping will help prevent moisture migrating from the crumb of the bread through the crust and forming ice crystals - which is exactly what you get if you use an old plastic bread bag or a zip-lock type bag. There's too much air in these bags. I never have ice crystals form in my frozen bread. If you use old bread bags or a zip-lock bag, just be sure to wrap the bread in plastic wrap first.

You know, you can make something out of that dough besides loaves.... I'll make 2-1/2-pounds of dough and make a 1-pound pullman loaf and make something else out of the ramining dough like burger/hot dog buns, dinner rolls, cinnamon/pecan rolls - all kept in the freezer and made out of the same bread dough.

I store them in individual serving sizes placed in pop-up foil sheets (I get a box of 500 sheets from Sam's Club). After they are placed in foil, I store them in a plastic container in the freezer. Now if I need 2 hamburger buns, I can stick them in the toaster oven (with the foil still on them) to re-heat, or grill them after they have thawed. I'll reheat 2 cinnamon or pecan rolls (in the foil) in the toaster oven for breakfast on Saturday. Man shall not live by bread alone.... ;-)

-Grainlady

We rarely have extras on homemade bread. When we do, I cube it and dry it out to make into croutons. My kids usually end up eating them before I can get the salad made.

Make sure you let it cool completely, then put in a plastic bag,then wrap in foil. Freeze and use within 2 months.

freezer, want a great bread recipe check out the dec/jan Mother earth magazine for this past dec/jan ..totally great recipe

How do you make hamburger or hotdog buns? I just recently started making all our bread homemade, but haven't figured out where to find a recipe for those yet..

mamato3-

You don't need a special bread recipe for hamburger and hot dog buns. Any enriched dough you already make will work. By enriched, the recipe will have enriching ingredients like milk, eggs, and fat included in it.

Add some honey (1-2 T.) to aid in getting a darker crust, which is common to buger/dog buns. Commercial buns have an inordinate amount of sugar as well as extra yeast to compensate for the extra sugar that affects the yeast, to get that dark brown top.

I make all my burger and dog buns using whatever type of dough I happen to be making for bread (usually 100% whole wheat bread).

You'll also get "softer" burger buns if you use all-purpose flour instead of bread flour, but bread flour will work fine too.

I scale (weigh on a kitchen/food scale) the dough to 2-ounces (3-oz. for large ones) for each bun so they are equal in size. They raise at the same rate and bake in the same amount of time if you make them the same size. Smooth the dough ball and then pat the dough to 1/2-inch thickness and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

I do use one trick for burger buns, but it's not necessary. I have two pans for muffin tops (Google - Muffin Top Pans - if you want to see what they look like) and these pans give the hamburger buns a little structure. Otherwise just place them on a cookie sheet, but give them plenty of room between buns. I also have a pan similar to the muffin top pans, but the holes are smaller and it makes 12 small buns on it. Perfect for buffet use, or when you need a small party sandwich.

For hot dog buns, a general rule of thumb is to roll the log of dough about the same size as the hot dog, sausage or "brat" you are going to serve on it. Measure that amount of dough and repeat the process using that amount.

To make a pan of hot dog buns for regular-size hot dogs, I use disposable foil pans (8-1/4x5-1/4x1-inch). You can get 4-5 hot dog buns in each pan.

I also have 6-1/2x10-1/2-inch cake pans that works for a pan of hot dog buns. I also scale the dough so that the buns are equal-sized. You want the buns to lay the short width of the pan, not the long way. This is going to give you hot dog buns you need to pull-apart, then slice open.

You can also make individual hot dog buns on a cookie sheet - leave plenty of room between them to double.

Check out the King Arthur Flour recipe (link below) and instructions.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Hamburger or Hot Dog Buns

Thanks grainlady!

I've been making only 2 bread recipes so far, since bread seemed stupid complicated before
I started making it (lol) but one I'm using is just the Classic sandwich bread recipe from King Arthur. I was poking around their site last week, and never even saw the recipe for buns!

I'll have to try to make some here in a couple days when we have hamburgers. Hopefully it'll come out as good as my bread has been!

My husband gave me the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day book that was excerpted in Mother Earth News last December. We really like the artisan bread, which I make using freshly ground hard red or white flour, plus a little white, oat, or kamut flour to reduce the % gluten. BUT the 6-3-3-13 formula they give you for a basic bread recipe is excellent for making loaf bread, even 100% whole grain bread. For the full 6-3-3-13 batch, I work in a stick of cold butter towards the end of the kneading. This is something recommended in Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. You don't add fat until the gluten has already been worked a good bit, and then you add a little cold butter at a time and knead it in. For loaf sandwich bread, I also add a little sweetener--either our honey or plain sugar, 1/4 cup to the full formula (sugar doesn't have the honey flavor). I find the basic formula can be modified like this, very easily. It's nice to be able to throw the dough together without a cookbook. With the formula in mind, I can make the artisan bread or loaf bread, tweaking it without risking failure. I just made three loaves, one pull-apart loaf, six hamburger buns, and six hot dog buns--following Grainlady's tip to weigh the dough to make uniform-sized buns.

chambleemama - Isn't Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day a fun bread method? Between that and Bread-In-A-Bag (a class I've taught many times), those are two great methods for beginners.

I do have a slight correction about adding fat information from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. Here's what's happening, and when to add fat to get a certain type of crumb. When you add the fat isn't right or wrong, just a choice.

Fat added early in mixing/kneading (commonly done in the direct dough method and bread machine recipes) is done mainly out of convenience, not because of bread science.

When fat is added early it has the same effect on flour and gluten that it does when you cut fat into flour for making short-crust pastry dough - especially if a recipe has a fairly large amount of fat. In a short-crust - the gluten is "shortened" for making a pastry crust. The fat coats the flour, hence the gluten, and wherever the fat coats flour, hydration can't get to the gluten to develop it. Fat shortens the gluten strands when kneaded. This results in a close-grained bread, an almost cake-like texture, and also a shorter loaf of bread.

This is the kind of bread you would want for making crustless tea sandwiches because it will slice very thin and hold together when sandwich fillings are added and the filling won't soak into the bread - as one example of a bread type you'd want to add the fat early.

You can use the same recipe, and by adding the fat after the gluten has developed, late in kneading, you'll get a more open texture to the crumb - the kind of texture that has enough openings to nicely hold butter and jelly when you make toast, and resulting in a taller-rising loaf of bread.

The type of fat is also something to consider. Solid fat sits on the surface while oil (or melted fats) are absorbed by the flour. Those also affect dough.

I often suggest people who tend to add too much flour during kneading to save some, or all, the fat to oil their hands during the last few minutes of kneading. This will keep the dough from sticking to their hands. Some of the stickiness of dough during kneading is often caused because people don't spend enough time mixing the flour into the wet ingredients. Mixing shouldn't EVER be hurried - but the flour added very slowly and well-beat between additions until you don't have the strength to beat the batter to dough anymore. The more gluten you develop while mixing the dough, the easier and quicker kneading will be. If the dough dumped out of the bowl after mixing is a shaggy, sticky mess, there wasn't enough mixing and gluten development.

I also wait to add the salt. When kneading by hand you will develop the gluten much faster than when the salt has been added early. Once salt is added, you'll really feel the gluten tighten. So a lot of the time I'll add the salt AND the fat towards the end of kneading. I use these same methods for adding fat and salt when using a bread machine according to what type of crumb I want in a bread - not by the recipe instructions.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Bread-in-a-Bag

Thank you for that explanation, Grainlady. My loaves didn't rise as high as my hamburger buns for some reason today. I'm going to play with this information over the next few bakings. The first batch of bulgur is drying in the oven, too. The Bread in a Bag recipe is outstanding, and I've forwarded it to a teacher cousin. Thanks!

My inlaws use stale bread to make Swedish rusk, not sure of the spelling. They put butter, sugar and cinnamon on it, brown it under the broiler, then turn oven down to dry it. They do that with stale cinnamon rolls, danish, etc.. They dunk it in their coffee.