Your bread is getting dry or stale, even though you might have done everything I suggested in my “Fresh bread is happy bread” blog post. But fear not, there are a couple of tricks to liven up your bread:
Heat your bread!
I am sure you noticed that bread is delicious when toasted, especially when it is already a little on the dry side. Heating up bread causes the starch in bread to do the same thing as when the bread is originally baked. In other words, with heat you are reversing starch retrogradation (the fancy word for becoming stale). Now you know why toasted bread is amazing. It makes your bread almost like freshly baked.
Whole or partial unsliced loaf
If you have a whole loaf, or unsliced portion of a loaf you can heat your bread in the oven. If you have a partial loaf, you may want to cover the cut-side to not dry out your loaf more. Bake at 375 F for about 10 minutes. You may want to check after 5 minutes and potentially leave it in for a total of 15 minutes. It really depends on the size and type of your bread, and of course your preference. You can also spray your loaf crust with a bit of water or briefly put it under running water which gives it back a little of the lost moisture and makes the crust more crisp without drying the bread out.
Sliced bread
You could put your sliced bread into aluminum foil in the oven, but the toaster is probably the easier and more convenient option.
Soft bread
Want to keep your bread soft? Then the oven or the toaster are not your best choice. Use your microwave for 10 to 20 seconds. Just think of what you do to your tortillas to make the soft and pliable, you can do the same with stale “soft” breads, such as naan, etc.
If your bread has gone too far and heating isn’t an option, there are always options to use your bread in other recipes, such as bread pudding. Personally, I love bread pudding. Not a surprise, since I like just about anything that is made with bread. But I never have enough bread left over and stale to make bread pudding, so I am sharing a recipe that doesn’t need loaves of stale bread but can be made with the little bit of crust you may have on your counter. And no, it isn’t croutons or bread crumbs.
Many recipes for stale bread call for baguette or french style white bread. This is great for whole wheat or rye bread.
Ymerdrys – a whole grain bread “granola” from Denmark.
All you need is stale bread, preferably dark bread such as rye or whole wheat (toasted), spices like cinnamon, sweeteners such as dried fruit and/or brown sugar. Eat with yogurt or how you prefer to eat granola. Try it!
Check out the recipe at My Danish Kitchen.