Did you know that you can refresh and soften stale crusty bread? Follow these simple steps to make your day-old bread taste like it’s fresh out of the oven!
We love a good baguette in this family but we often don’t finish an entire loaf in one day. The next day when one of the kids goes to grab a chunk for a snack, the bread is usually hard as a rock and needs to be put into the pile for feeding the ducks instead. So sad! I was so excited to learn about this trick to soften stale crusty bread because now we can go ahead and stock up on several days worth of fresh bread without having to worry about it going to waste!
This trick is for your crusty breads only. Your baguettes, ciabattas, and things like that. Those seem to be the ones that go stale so quickly anyway though, so it works out perfectly!
How to Refresh and Soften Stale Crusty Bread
So here’s how it works!
First, grab the stale loaf of bread in question.
Run the loaf of bread under running water (yes, really!) to moisten the outside of the crust. If your loaf of bread has already been cut, try not to get any water on the cut part if you can avoid it.
Next, wrap the loaf of bread in aluminum foil.
Place the loaf of bread in a cold oven and turn it on to 300 degrees. Set the oven timer for ten minutes.
When the ten minute timer goes off, remove the bread from the oven and take the aluminum foil off.
Put the unwrapped loaf of bread back in the oven for another 5 minutes to re-crustify the exterior of the bread.
Remove the bread from the oven and enjoy it right away!
Do you have a trick like this to soften stale crusty bread?
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- How I Keep Celery Fresh Pretty Much Forever
- The Trick to Keeping Leafy Greens Fresh
- How to Make Your Own Brown Sugar
- DIY Homemade Cake Mix Recipe
- The Secret Language of Peppers
- The Creek Line House Food and Recipe Archives
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.