How to soften sourdough?

FowlersFreeTime

FowlersFreeTime

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Tell me if you can relate:
  • Go to bakery, buy loaf of bread (sourdough or baguette)
  • Go home, enjoy a slice or two.
  • A day later, try to enjoy same bread but its gotten so tough, you are afraid to damage your teeth when chewing it.
To be clear: we bought the bread on Saturday morning. It was made a few hours prior, sliced upon purchase, and wrapped in paper then placed in a paper bag. It has been on the counter like that since. It is now so tough to chew, I am thinking to make croutons out of this bread now instead of eating it as sandwich bread.

Is there a magic trick to soften the bread so I can enjoy it?
 
FowlersFreeTime said:
Tell me if you can relate:
  • Go to bakery, buy loaf of bread (sourdough or baguette)
  • Go home, enjoy a slice or two.
  • A day later, try to enjoy same bread but its gotten so tough, you are afraid to damage your teeth when chewing it.
To be clear: we bought the bread on Saturday morning. It was made a few hours prior, sliced upon purchase, and wrapped in paper then placed in a paper bag. It has been on the counter like that since. It is now so tough to chew, I am thinking to make croutons out of this bread now instead of eating it as sandwich bread.

Is there a magic trick to soften the bread so I can enjoy it?
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Finns eat a lot of hard rye bread. My mom softens dry bread by warming it up in a pan with a dollop of water (under a lid). I just use the microwave - ~20-30 seconds, no water needed.
 
If you are buying your sour dough bread, shop around until you find a brand that stays soft longer. Bread makers know a few tricks to keeping bread soft. They also know a few tricks to keep bread from going moldy quickly. If there's anything that burns me, it's having some bread rolls that were baked in the store go blue, sometimes before I can even use it for the first time. I just had a whole package of ciabatta rolls turn blue on me and that was within three days of purchase. Yuck.
 
flyinglentris said:
If you are buying your sour dough bread, shop around until you find a brand that stays soft longer. Bread makers know a few tricks to keeping bread soft. They also know a few tricks to keep bread from going moldy quickly. If there's anything that burns me, it's having some bread rolls that were baked in the store go blue, sometimes before I can even use it for the first time. I just had a whole package of ciabatta rolls turn blue on me and that was within three days of purchase. Yuck.
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This bakery is our favorite in the area, everything is made fresh same day and the manager is a real gem. This category of bread is just my personal kryptonite as I seem to encounter this scenario every time. If I had eaten half the loaf and had to make the remainder into crostinis or croutons, I might not have minded as much. BTW, yes I agree with you on the rapid molding too, but thankfully hasn't been an issue at this bakery yet.

Perhaps I should not buy it pre-sliced?

Hemulen I will try experiments with damp paper towel and microwave later.
 
FowlersFreeTime said:
This bakery is our favorite in the area, everything is made fresh same day and the manager is a real gem. This category of bread is just my personal kryptonite as I seem to encounter this scenario every time. If I had eaten half the loaf and had to make the remainder into crostinis or croutons, I might not have minded as much. BTW, yes I agree with you on the rapid molding too, but thankfully hasn't been an issue at this bakery yet.

Perhaps I should not buy it pre-sliced?

Hemulen I will try experiments with damp paper towel and microwave later.
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Learn to love bruscetta. :)
 
The microwave works. It only takes about ten seconds (15 tops) for a small amount of bread to warm and soften. If you put the bread in a loose plastic bag, it works even better.

CD
 
Tried a damp paper towel and 20 seconds in microwave. Center was nice and soft, crust was very chewy.

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I'm going to try without the damp paper towel, but I just think I should avoid this style of bread in the future.
 
Sooo, I just used the Air Fryer for this and it worked well too!
Dampen bread slightly with water, place slices in air fryer at 330F for a few minutes (depends on thickness of slice) and you get the same crispy edges with softer middle. Bonus: its quicker and less wasteful (gas/electricity) to do this in the airfryer vs oven if you're only making one sandwich at a time.
 
FowlersFreeTime said:
This bakery is our favorite in the area, everything is made fresh same day and the manager is a real gem. This category of bread is just my personal kryptonite as I seem to encounter this scenario every time. If I had eaten half the loaf and had to make the remainder into crostinis or croutons, I might not have minded as much. BTW, yes I agree with you on the rapid molding too, but thankfully hasn't been an issue at this bakery yet.

Perhaps I should not buy it pre-sliced?

Hemulen I will try experiments with damp paper towel and microwave later.
Click to expand...

I get my sour dough from the local supermarket, but from a specialty bread supplier ...

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I don't recall ever having it go moldy or dry.
 
I wrap in plastic wrap for storage then put in a 350 oven, which seems to revitalize the bread 1 or 2 more times over the next day or 2. After that it bread crumbs or croutons. Microwaving works well to soften but I prefer the crust to be crunchy and the oven seems to work best for me.
 
The best storage solution we have come up with is to freeze it on the day of purchase and no later. If it is unsliced, we slice it and freeze it. Then just remove a slice or 2 each at a time, defrost naturally and use within ½hr of defrosting. That way it stays fresh.

But from what I'm reading, one or two people seem to forget that there is a reason that bread of any type is tradionally baked daily. It has never kept well until articical preservatives came along and perhaps expecting any bread to last beyond the day after it was baked is actually expecting too much? Well at least in my book it is, perhaps not in other people's books?
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
But from what I'm reading, one or two people seem to forget that there is a reason that bread of any type is tradionally baked daily. It has never kept well until articical preservatives came along and perhaps expecting any bread to last beyond the day after it was baked is actually expecting too much? Well at least in my book it is, perhaps not in other people's books?
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I think this is the crux of the matter for my wife and I; we're just spoilt like that. Plus its only 2 of us in the house and sometimes portions here in America are so large (Seriously if they offered to sell me a half-loaf, I would buy it) that things spoil before we can eat everything.
I'll freeze the bread next time.
 
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