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| Homemade bread - including my successful Sun Oven experiment |
Please allow me a bit of a brag: I have stopped buying bread at the store altogether. Between my NutriMill
and my Bosch mixer,
making bread with wheat from my food storage couldn't be easier. I bake four loaves at a time (the Bosch can handle six, but I only have four bread pans!) and freeze them.Here's the problem: my frozen loaves just aren't as moist and tasty as they are when fresh.I have experimented with the type of sugar I use in the bread - white sugar, honey, or brown sugar. I have experimented with the type of wrapping I give the bread before freezing it - a freezer bag, foil, or a layer of plastic wrap, then foil.
Nothing I've tried seems to make much of a difference.
So I ask you, gentle readers: what are your best tricks for freezing bread so that the taste and texture when it thawed is like freshly baked bread?
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Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible, and I've tried. But what I do is double wrap it in plastic wrap, and then put it into a ziptop freezer bag. As long as I don't have it in the freezer for too long (a month max), it seems to be CLOSE to fresh tasting.
ReplyDeleteI make my bread and freeze it. I make 8 loaves every Thursday. There's 8 of us so we go through bread fairly quick.
ReplyDeleteAfter they have completely cooled, I bag them up and then put 3 loaves to a big blue Ziploc bag, and shut that good. Then into the Freezer it goes. When I need it, I set it out on the counter the night before and let it thaw if I need it for breakfast the next morning, otherwise, I lay it out first thing in the morning and it's thawed and ready within a couple of hours.
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ReplyDeleteWarmly,
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Once the bread is cooled, I slice it about 3/4 inch thick and put half a waxed sheet (kabnet wax like in the bakery) around each slice. I then put about 5 slices in a ziplock bag and push out most of the air and freeze. Each 2 lb loaf makes about 15 slices. (we reuse the zip lock bags but not the waxed paper) I take mine and pop it into the toaster, my husband packs a slice the night before and eats his with coffee at the office. So far, no complaint about freezer taste, but the longest it had stayed in the freezer before being used is about a month.
ReplyDeleteI find that in storing anything in the freezer, the key is to wrap it well and exclude all the air possible.
ReplyDeleteI butcher my own deer and using either freezer bags or quality zip type bags (good store brands are ok; avoid the cheap store brands), and as much as possible I put several bagged portions in a bigger bag - doing this keeps it good for years.
I just used a loaf of bread that had been in the freezer for 8 months - tightly sealed in a a good condition bag if was only a little dry around the crust; I've had bread get worse sitting in the fridge for a week!