How To Reheat Bread And Make It Soft?

People who love bread but don’t want to eat it on their own can enjoy some of the best foods with friends and family. However, it’s common for people to store leftover bread which has already gone cold. This article will show how to reheat your bread without having it dry out or being too hard after being left in the fridge overnight.

Why does bread become hard?

When bread gets dry and hard when it is kept”in an airtight container, many people feel in dilemma how to reheat bread. Putting bread in the refrigerator can make it go bad quicker. Bread that is too moist, like in a bag or in a bread box will get moldy and stale more quickly than bread if not eaten right away.

If you want to keep your bread fresh longer, we recommend storing it at room temperature in a cool, dry place (not near any appliances) and using it within one week of purchase. Putting sliced bread in the freezer will allow you to easily toast individual slices as needed which helps them stay fresh longer.

How To Reheat Bread: Step 1 – Pre-heat The Oven

Before we get to the actual reheating process, it is useful to pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (356 Fahrenheit). This means that when you start heating up your bread, it will be at a hotter temperature which helps make sure your bread is warm and soft again before serving.

You may also want to consider turning on the grill setting if you have one available. Doing this will mean that the top of your bread becomes slightly crispy, making for an extra tasty treat!

How To Reheat Bread: Step 2 – Wrap It In A Light Tea Towel

Take a clean tea towel and fold it in half. Then take another tea towel and wrap that around the outside of your bread. You want to make sure that the tea towels are large enough to cover all sides of your bread, but not too big that they’re too heavy for you to handle easily.

How To Reheat Bread: Step 3 – Heat For 15 – 30 Seconds

Once you have wrapped up your bread in a tea towel, put it into a pre-heated oven on low heat for approximately 15 – 30 seconds. After this time has passed, take out the bread and see how it feels! If it is warmer than usual but still cool on the inside, then leave it in for longer until it reaches an internal temperature that is hotter than usual.

If your bread feels OK on the outside but is still cool on the inside, put the bread back in for another 10 seconds and try again. Keep repeating this process until your bread has reached a suitable temperature.

How To Reheat Bread: Step 4 – Serve Your Food!

Once you have sufficiently warmed up your food, take it out of the oven and serve it to people with some butter and jam. The warm outer layer and soft inner section will make for one tasty treat!

If you don’t want to use an oven or grill setting, all other steps can be followed exactly as listed above. This typically requires repeating the process more often, but this should not be too time-consuming considering how quickly such a simple procedure works.

Why Bread Goes Stale?

When the bread is fresh it is soft, white, and has a slightly sweet taste. But what causes the bread to go stale? Is it because of its composition or perhaps due to an enzyme activity that occurs with time? A new study now suggests that bread goes stale because of simple chemical reactions that are made possible by enzymes present in flour. The study was published earlier this week in the journal eLife.

The whole process of bread going stale takes about two days but if you look at individual components of bread – the starch granules – they start reacting with water and oxygen from the air within minutes after coming into contact. When we take a bite out of fresh bread the enzymes will be transported from the flour into our mouth and can start reacting.

You would expect this process to be fast but instead, it takes about two days for eighty percent of crumb staling – a conclusion that was made by feeding volunteers with slices.

How to steam bread?

(Note that this is an addition; the original article did not mention steaming) Steamed bread has a different texture than oven-reheated bread.

• I’ve heard conflicting reports about which is better, but it seems like most people prefer oven-reheated bread over steamed bread.
• To steam bread, take any sandwich wrap and fill it with a damp paper towel.
• If you have parchment paper or something similar, use that instead of a sandwich wrap.
• Use the sandwich wrap/parchment paper to completely cover the bread or partially cover it if you want your bread crunchy on all sides.

Wrap the damp paper towel tightly around the entire piece of bread and place it in the microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute. If you want your bread with cheese on it, but the cheese on top before microwaving.

Final Verdict

I hope that having read this article you can now safely reheat bread without having to worry about making it too hard or dry. With the inside still soft and the outside crispy, there’s no way that anyone can say ‘no’ to one of your delicious breakfasts!

If you are reading this after trying out these steps yourself, please leave a comment below with your feedback! I would love to hear other people’s experiences in order to make any improvements to my future articles.

You can also read: Why Does Almond Milk Curdle In Coffee (4 Easy Fixes)

Thank you for reading this article, and I hope that whatever food preparation task you have recently tried that did not work out well has gone much more smoothly after considering these points!