I’m obviously aware of the Terrible History of foodwriters doing a piece on ‘How to boil water’ or something similarly facile and their subsequent running out of town by a torch-bearing mob. But I’m sorry... I’ve got to get something off my chest.
I’m very lucky. I own a bakery. I’ve got our drivers on speed-dial and, if I hit the button, someone will drop a sourdough, hot from the oven, at my door in under half an hour. That’s what you call privilege and I don’t just recognise it, I embrace it. But it means I get to experience fresh bread on the reg and it’s left me with opinions. It frankly terrifies me how badly most other people treat the loaves they buy.
Sourdough stales slower than regular bread, though quicker than the crap from the supermarket which is laden with preservatives and will go mouldy before it ever goes hard. So unless you have a family of six teenagers, a large sourdough loaf would probably stale before you finished it.
Storing
If you wrap the loaf tightly in cling-film, it will go a weird texture where it loses any crispness while building up a rubbery chewiness. If you wrap it in a clean tea-towel it will keep crisp longer but it will still go hard within three days. That weird waxed cloth gives results half way between the two that please no-one. A thick canvas ‘bag-for-life’ gives you the best of all worlds... but all of this is tinkering. Why TF are we bothering? We can keep it fresh forever by the simple expedient of slicing it the minute we get it home, sealing it in a Ziploc and chucking it in the freezer.
Bread freezes beautifully and loses none of its qualities in the process. Frozen slices pop easily apart... the furthest you’ll ever have to go is slipping in the tip of a palette knife and twisting. They’ll then defrost completely in less than ten minutes. Frozen slices can go straight into the toaster.
So yes. £4.50 seems steep for ‘just a loaf of bread’ that stales faster than the Living Dead supermarket loaf at £1.50. But it’s not a lot to pay for two slices of perfect fresh sourdough toast, every morning for 10 days.
Slicing.
The loaf should be sliced and frozen as fast as humanly possible - I’m lucky, I can do it while it’s still warm - but you won’t be much later if you have to cycle home from the bakery. Of course, everybody knows that fresh bread is difficult to cut and gets easier when it stales, which is why I’m going to tell you that owning a good breadknife is the best investment in your own mental health that you could possibly make. I use a Wüsthof Classic Precision Double Serrated Bread Knife because a) I’m obviously a professional and b) they sent me one. They cost about £145. It’s the best breadknife I’ve ever owned and it goes through warm fresh bread like a light sabre.
You could also look for a Tojiro breadknife from Japan. It’s an absolute endless adventure trying to find one online. They used to be £20 on Amazon but they no longer stock them. Now you can find them in weird back corners of the web for under £30, or more expensive than the Wüsthof when curated and sold back to you by hipsters.
It would be great if we could all, easily get great breadknives for under £30 because the inconvenient truth is that breadknives, being serrated, can’t be resharpened. So you will be needing a new one in a few years, however much you spend.
OK. Now the irritating bit. I’m going to tell you how to slice bread.
It might be that you like regular machine-style slices but I find that, if I’m taking them out of the freezer only as needed, it’s better to have a variety of thicknesses and sizes. So these are the steps.
Cut the loaf cleanly across the middle and remove 3 or four full-width slices from each side. These are easy cuts, even when the bread is fresh, because you can get a good grip. Because of the long oval shape of the loaf, these slices will be, near as damnit, the same size and shape. Premium ‘show-slices’. Ideal for photogenic, showoff sandwiches. I also make sure four slices are thick and four are thin. One doesn’t always need a full doorstep. If you vary thicknesses, remember to do an even number of each. It’s a simple courtesy.
You’ll now have two hemispherical ends to work on. The smaller ends are a mare to slice accurately, and worse when fresh. So turn each onto its cut face and slice downwards. It’s much easier to control the cuts this way so you should, again, be able to do some thick, some thin. These are D-shaped ‘half-slices’ and less absolutely regular in size.
A large loaf will now pack neatly into a Ziploc. The four small end crusts usually get frozen into another bag where I accumulate them for breadcrumbs or croutons.
Now the only thing that can go wrong is somebody putting the butter dish in the bloody fridge.
Oh God.... I know I should try this! How the hell am I going to explain ANOTHER sharpening tool in the drawer?
This is PERFECT! My daughter taught her uni friends that yes, you can freeze bread 🤣