Bakers’ Home Storage Tips for Sliced Bread’s 90th Birthday

In honor of the bread slicer’s debut in 1928, we offer the best bread storage tips since, well ... you get it

Gwendolyn Purdom July 7, 2018

Lover of architecture, history, dogs, the Chicago Cubs, crowded bookshelves, and homes with a story. Former editor at Preservation mag and Culturess.com.

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When something is described as “the best thing since sliced bread,” the comparison is technically limited to innovations that have come about after July 7, 1928. That’s when a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, started using Otto Rohwedder’s revolutionary commercial bread-slicing machine to offer pre-cut loaves to customers.

Bakers' Home Storage Tips for Sliced Bread's 90th Birthday

“The idea of sliced bread may be startling to some people,” a blurb in Chillicothe’s Constitution-Tribune read at the time. “Certainly it represents a definite departure from the usual manner of supplying the consumer with bakers loaves.”

At first, shoppers didn’t like the uneven slices, and the fact that sliced bread seemed to go stale faster than its whole counterpart. But once cutting and preserving technology evolved, the convenience of sliced bread made it such a hit that its restriction during World War II (the slicers’ steel was needed for the war effort) sparked widespread distress in kitchens across the country.

Ninety years later, sliced loaves still come in handy for bagged lunch sandwiches and morning toast, and consumers still worry about ways to keep the stuff fresh at home, whether it’s a commercially sliced white loaf or a bakery-made brioche.

The Best Ways to Store Bread

To celebrate nine decades of sliced bread, we asked professional bakers to weigh in on where and how they store their bread at home. Here are a few tips that rose above the rest.

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Bag it. Ken Forkish, of Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon, says he stores his breads in plastic bags at home. “They preserve it the best, even though I have pangs of conscience, and try to subvert those pangs by reusing the bags over and over,” Forkish says. Different breads stay fresh for different lengths of time, as some have more hydrated dough or more acidity. Forkish says his country-style bread keeps in plastic bags for five or six days.

Catherine Scott, of Denver’s Babettes Artisan Bread, says she opts to store bread in paper bags since plastic can make some crusts chewy. Keeping loaves face down on a cutting board is another option, Scott says, particularly if you’re dealing with breads with a chewier, more hydrated center, like the French country styles Babettes bakes.

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Freeze it. Freezing bread can preserve it for two to three months or longer depending on the type of loaf.

Scott recommends wrapping bread you’re freezing tightly in plastic, and then unwrapping it and letting it thaw at room temperature before using it.

Murphy & Co. Design

Box it. A breadbox can add a touch of farmhouse charm to a kitchen, but does it actually help the bread it’s meant to store?

Forkish says breadboxes can work well if they are airtight. The idea behind a breadbox is balancing air circulation and humidity so that the bread’s center stays soft and the crust stays crusty. Be careful not to pack a box with too many loaves, though. That traps more humidity, which can turn crusts chewy.

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Envision Web

Forkish says he doesn’t use a breadbox in his own kitchen because he prefers an uncluttered counter and, depending on how big a box you get, they can be bulky. (If there’s room in the pantry, storing your breadbox there can address the counter space issue.) Scott says she doesn’t use one either but has customers who swear by them.

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Storing bread in a refrigerator actually makes it go stale faster than keeping it in an airtight container, like a breadbox or other breadbin, at room temperature.

Fivecat Studio | Architecture

Make the most of it. Even if your bread does start going stale, it’s hardly a lost cause. “We do wish more people would realize that you can cook with [bread] when it is getting dry,” Scott says.

There are plenty of recipes beyond breadcrumbs or croutons that call for stale bread. Forkish suggests soaking stale bread in cream and topping it with berries, for instance, and Scott uses her stale bread for dishes like Tuscan bread salad, stuffing, meatballs or French onion soup.

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Tell us: How do you store your bread at home? Do you use a breadbox, paper bags or plastic? Share your strategies in the Comments.

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