Whether you buy bread from a supermarket or bakery or bake it yourself the goal is to keep the bread from going stale while it’s there. Think the fridge makes everything last longer? If you put bread in the fridge it will actually go stale much faster.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 America's Test Kitchen | 2018-07-22 16:00:01 |  87,380 Views |
This is why you shouldn't store your bread in the fridge
You might guess that this happens because the refrigerator is a dry environment. That’s part of the answer but the aging process involves more than just a loss of moisture. Bread goes stale when the water in the starch molecules migrates to the outside of the bread causing them to recrystallize; this changes the structure of those molecules from soft relaxed and mushy to hard and crisp. This phenomenon is called retrogradation and while it will inevitably happen over time—regardless of the conditions in which the bread is stored—it happens faster at refrigerator-cold temperatures. (The freezer works better though because science is weird.)
If a recipe calls for stale bread—like French toast panzanella or Jacques Pépin’s savory pancakes—and you don’t have stale bread you can pop a few slices in the refrigerator and use the rapid staling to your advantage. Otherwise it’s best to store your bread at a warmer temperature.
In its simplest form most breads are made from air proteins and starches. The gluten (or protein) in flour helps bread hold its structure around air pockets—that’s how the crumb forms and the bread rises. Meanwhile starch molecules in flour like amylose and amylopectin are crystalline; they have sharp edges and like to arrange themselves in an orderly fashion. Water softens these edges and disrupts their structure somewhat essentially loosening them. This is what makes fresh bread soft springy and pillowy.
