So you’ve successfully nurtured your own sourdough starter avoided the biggest mistakes people make with sourdough and now you have a beautiful loaf of bread ready to be devoured. Except chances are you won’t eat it all at once and when storing leftovers you have to deal with perhaps the biggest challenge of homemade bread: it can go stale quickly. Homemade bread goes stale quickly because home cooks like you don’t use the anti-aging preservatives that many commercial bakeries use.
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9 Ways to Keep Your Sourdough Bread Fresh!
Luckily the acid produced by sourdough fermentation helps keep your bread fresh for an average of four to five days. For the first 24 hours the best place to store your sourdough bread is on the countertop—no wrapping paper or bread box required. Make sure to place the cut end on your cutting board to keep the air out of it which will prevent it from drying out. If you’ve been storing the end of your bread you can press it against the cut end for the same effect. This should keep your bread looking good as new for a day but for longer storage you’ll need to take extra precautions.
For storage up to five days the easiest option is to place the sourdough bread back in a brown paper bag making sure the cut side is facing down or toward the end to prevent it from drying out. Another option is to wrap the bread in a tea towel and store it on the counter in the Dutch oven you baked it in. You can also use a bread box but make sure it doesn’t let too much air in.
For longer storage than five days store your sourdough bread in the freezer. You can even slice it ahead of time if you like so you can thaw just as much as you need at any given time. If you freeze the bread when it’s at its freshest it should be just as good when it thaws. Whatever you do don’t store any type of bread in the refrigerator as refrigerator temperatures are conducive to bread going stale.
