Kitchen Disasters

eat it.

freeze it.

dehydrate it.

give it to someone hungry.

incinerate it.

Yeah... on second thought, probably the most effective way to keep ones fresh baked bread from going stale would be...

...additional practice cooking and trying variations in recipe and ingredients. With the right combination of skill, recipe and ingredients, the problem of stale bread should magically disappear.

Got Stale bread..... Make French toast.......

When all my brothers and sisters got out of the 4H horse project, my dad switched from riding horses to draft horses....... And there were times where we did not work them enough so we would send them to an Amish family farm about 100+ miles away for the summer ........ Dad got to be pretty good friends with them, and when we'd pick up our team in July/August we would bring them about 500-750 lbs of fresh Cherries. They in turned would give dad baked goods, one time it included 5 loaves of fresh bread among the pastries...... Which dad promptly ate all the bread on the way home..........

Disappointed, I did not feel sorry for his pains that night

Take the amount you are likely to eat within the next 3 days and store it in a container at room temperature with a damp paper towel. Expect anything not eaten after 4 or 5 days to become moldy.

Take the rest of the bread and store it in an airtight bag in your freezer. Bread that is frozen will return to a fresh state when thawed. You can speed up the thawing process by spraying the bread with a light mist of water and putting it in a warm (250F) oven for about 20 min. Bread stored in the refrigerator dries out quickly, so don't store bread there.

You could also add preservatives to improve shelf life and minimize mold growth. Or irradiate it.

I put mine in a plastic bag (freezer bag, supermarket bag, depending on the size of the loaf) and put it in the fridge. Lasts at least 2 weeks. If it does go a bit mouldy after that I shave the mould off. I never waste any.

I rarely have much good to say about my ex-wife, BUT her freshly baked bread never went stale. In fact it usually never lasted long enough to cool off.

Nothing more heavenly than fresh baked bread when it's still warm.........

"Adding about 1/4 cup of instant mashed potato flakes to your dough along with the other dry ingredients helps to add moisture and starch to the loaf of bread, making the baked bread softer and helping the bread to stay fresher longer. Instead of using additional flour, which will dry out homemade bread, instant mashed potato flakes provide texture without the additional dryness.

Gluten is what is developed when you knead bread, and it gives the bread the yummy chew. Adding additional, pure gluten helps with the chew and "foldability" of the bread. I always add about 3 teaspoons of gluten to my bread recipes. (Gluten can usually be found in your grocery store next to the flour).When slicing home baked bread, start slicing from the center. Then, when storing the bread, push the two open ends together before placing in a bread bag. This prevents the cut ends of the bread from becoming dry."
reference....

Most people seem to be allergic to gluten these days! That and peanuts

Well according to what test you subscribe to, somewhere between 3 and 15% of the population have anti-gliadin antibodies (AGA).

ref...

Peanut allergies are estimated to affect 0.4-0.6% of the population...

ref...