One of life’s greatest joys is fresh and soft bread. However, it has a short shelf life. Bakery-style loaves such as sourdough, peasant bread, and baguettes, even when stored correctly, only survive a few days at room temperature before becoming rotten and rock-hard. The good news is some methods can revive that hard bread and bring it to life again.
How to Make Bread Soft Again?
The Internet is full of methods through which stale and hard bread that’s past its prime can be soft and chewy again.
Method 1 – Microwave
If you are hasty, want to leave for work, and do not have time to preheat an oven and wait to revive your bread to have nice and soft slices, try out this method; well, it’s not the ultimate solution, but it gives you a quick softer version of your bread.
Shroud your bread slices into a damp paper towel and microwave it minutes by minute until it reaches the desired softness, the bread will be noticeably soft after a minute or two, and you are good to eat those slices.
Method 2 – Steam
This method of reviving your bread can make it extra soft as it retains lots of moisture needed in the first place. For this method to work, you will need a heavy pot filled with shallow water. Heat the water on medium flame, and once the water starts to boil, add sliced bread in the steamer basket and place it over the pot, let it steam for at least 5 minutes, and check if the bread is ready to eat.
This method adds less heat and more moisture to your bread as compared to microwave and oven. Watch out to now overheat the steamer as it might destroy the chewiness making the bread soggy.
Method 3 – Re-Bake
Finally, the most effective method can give life to that hard-core bread and bring it closest to the freshly baked texture and softness. This technique seems to be a step in the right direction, as it works better than the former two methods and returns the bread to its original soft crust and chewy center.
Spray some water all over the bread or run tap water over the bread if it’s very hard and then wrap it in heavy-duty aluminum foil and bake it in the pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for ten minutes, open the foil and again bake it for another 5 mins to make its crust nice and crispy.
Now the question is will it be perfect? No, it won’t be the same as when you bought or baked the first time, but it will be the closest, and good to eat.
Tips to Be a Bread Master
Here are some tips that will help you while trying these methods and save you from further catastrophe.
- Dense pieces of bread are stale earlier than light pieces of bread. Cakes and bread with sugar, fats, and other ingredients also possess an additional stale resistance.
- To restore the freshness of the bread for a longer time, don’t let it dry in the open air; store it in airtight packaging or freeze until ready to use; just before your meal, thaw the frozen bread in the oven, and you can enjoy the crispy and chewy bread again.
- If you don’t want to serve this stale bread at dinner to others as it is, you can improvise it by adding some variation to it such as make it garlic bread. To make garlic bread, slice the bread without pulling it apart, mix butter, garlic, salt, and fresh herbs, spread this paste onto each slice, and bake it.
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