Experts' Experts: Don't Refrigerate Bread

Emily Heil took a deep dive on this subject and wrote up her findings in a Washington Post article, which follows.

The Refrigerator is a Surefire Way to Make Your Bread Go Stale Faster

The refrigerator is a not-so-modern marvel. Over the decades, the appliance has fundamentally changed the way Americans shop, cook and eat, and it's undeniably handy for prolonging the life of so many foods (yes, including tomatoes!).

But people have zero chill over a recent proclamation by a recognized expert on something that isn't best served by a trip to the fridge.

Paul Hollywood, the cookbook author, TV personality, and "Great British Baking Show" judge, recently posted a video on TikTok in which he proclaimed that the correct method of storage for bread is not inside an icebox.

"A big question I get asked a lot — 'where do you store bread?'" he starts off in the clip, which has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

"If you put your bread in the fridge, it will stale three times quicker because you're drawing all the moisture out of the loaf," he goes on to explain.

Actually, while Hollywood is not wrong that moisture loss is bad for bread, it's not the primary reason to avoid refrigerating bread. The science: Refrigeration speeds up the starches' return to a more organized crystalline structure (also known as retrogradation), which means it hardens (i.e. stales) far faster.

We've been telling readers this for years: A 1996 test by The Washington Post of various bread-storing methods concluded that “about the worst thing you can do is refrigerate the bread.”

Science notwithstanding, it seems that Team Fridge is strong, and plenty of commenters took issue with the instructions from the guy who should know — after all, you don't get called "the King of Bread" for nothing.

Most of the naysayers lamented how quickly bread gets moldy when it's not chilled. (This debate, I should note, plays out in my own household, and I sometimes find myself fishing a loaf out of the fridge, where my husband has stashed it.)

"I say you wrong," one commenter replied. "I keep mine in a sealed bag in the fridge and it keeps much better in than out."

"I keep mine in the fridge and it stays fresher longer," said another.

"OK Paul but if I keep it out it will mold from humidity," was another representative lament.

Hollywood — who says that he prefers to store his bread in a paper bag left out on the counter — isn't the only bread expert (breadfluencer?) who insists that loaves don't belong in the fridge.

"You don't want to put bread in the fridge, ever," Andrew Janjigian, author of the bread-focused Wordloaf newsletter, told my colleague Aaron Hutcherson last year.

For a crusty loaf, Janjigian prefers to store it cut-side down on the cutting board — a technique that my colleague Becky Krystal also employs at home.

Commenters calling out Hollywood, though, do have a point.

Unrefrigerated bread does typically get moldy faster.

The trade-off is longevity over texture, and many consumers are more concerned with stretching their bread (and their metaphorical bread) as far as possible, especially these days.

To which we say, fair. And also: freeze!

Becky wrote a helpful guide to storing bread in that other section of your favorite appliance.

She says the freezer "serves as a kind of pause button, meaning fresh bread you move into cold storage can come out almost as good as the day you put it in."

Her advice includes this smart tip: "Pre-sliced store-bought breads can be grouped into packets of a few slices each. Separate slices with pieces of parchment or wax paper if you think you're more likely to use one slice at a time."

Sounds like a very cool solution.

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Let me add a couple things:

• Slicing unsliced bread before freezing it is way more convenient than removing the whole loaf from the freezer and then letting it defrost enough to slice, besides being safer when it comes to your impatience and a razor-sharp bread knife going to work on a still cold and hard-at-the-center loaf.

• Did bread boxes suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth? Not one word about a device that's been around since antiquity. And remember: a loaf of bread is smaller than a bread box.

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 N.B. The vintage bread box pictured up top (approaching 100 years old) dates from the 1930s.