Two Days to Bake, Half Saved for Later: 7 Ways Home Bakers Keep a Loaf, Ranked

…and it happens in a lot of home-baking kitchens. You feed the starter, mix, fold, prove it overnight and bake at dawn. Then, often the very next day, half the loaf is sliced and put away for later, because a home sourdough has no preservatives and won't wait while two people work through it. Some bakers have quietly gone further, baking half-size loaves or baking less.

Putting half away works, and we say so in the list below. But a loaf you spent two days on deserves to be eaten fresh first. Bakers themselves say a fresh loaf is meant to last about two or three days.

Below are the seven ways home bakers keep a loaf, what the evidence says about each, and our ranking for one job: this week's loaf, eaten fresh.

1. A beeswax-lined cotton bag, on the bench

Most ways of keeping bread pick a side. Plastic holds the moisture in, so the crust goes soft and leathery. Paper and cloth let it out, so the crumb dries. A beeswax-lined cotton bag sits between the two: cotton outside, a beeswax-coated lining inside, rolled shut and clipped, but not sealed like plastic.

Independent evidence is thin, and we would rather say so. King Arthur Baking's sourdough storage guide says a beeswax-lined cotton bag “works very well” for sourdough (the bag it shows is its own, not ours). King Arthur's earlier test found no wrap keeps a crisp crust and a soft crumb for more than a day, so expect the crust to soften after day one. And the one small controlled trial we found, on beeswax wraps rather than bags, found no difference from plastic in most comparisons. What we can add is what our own customers report, quoted further down.

Sources: King Arthur Baking, “How to store sourdough bread” (6 Nov 2024); King Arthur Baking, “The best way to store yeast bread” (2020); Beck, Lane et al., University of Montana (2021), beeswax wrap trial.

My recommendationOur pick for a whole crusty or sourdough loaf you're eating this week. It stays on the bench, needs no planning, and keeps the loaf fresh for up to 7 days if you keep it whole, stand it cut-side down inside the bag and slice as you go. It is not for long-term storage: for a loaf you won't get to this week, method 5 is still the right call.

4. The paper bag or a tea towel

The bakery's paper bag and the tea towel both let the loaf breathe, so the crust stays crisp on day one. They also let the moisture out of the crumb.

Taste of Home found bakery sourdough kept in a paper bag was “hard as a rock” by day two. In King Arthur's test, cloth hardened the crust and dried the crumb within a day. CHOICE does list brown paper among the reasonable options for crusty bread.

Sources: Taste of Home, “How to Keep Bread Fresh (Yes, a Bread Box Works!)”; King Arthur Baking, “The best way to store yeast bread” (2020); CHOICE, “Foods you do (and don't) need to refrigerate”.

My recommendationFine for tonight and tomorrow. By midweek, it's toast.

5. The freezer

Slicing the loaf into the freezer on day one stops the waste. It also means every slice is thawed or toasted, and someone has to remember to take tomorrow's slices out the night before.

This is the method the evidence backs most clearly. Freezing dramatically slows the staling process. NSW's Love Food Hate Waste advises the freezer for bread you'll keep longer than five days, and Bakers Delight says bread can be frozen for up to four months.

Sources: Serious Eats (J. Kenji López-Alt), on refrigerating bread; NSW EPA, Love Food Hate Waste, “How to store”; Bakers Delight, “How long does bread last?”.

My recommendationThe clear winner for anything you won't eat within about five days, including the second loaf from a weekend bake. Ours doesn't beat it there. For the loaf you're eating now, it trades fresh bread for thawed bread.

6. A plastic bag

A sealed plastic bag keeps the crumb soft. It also traps the moisture the loaf gives off, so the crust goes soft and leathery, and on a warm bench the bag fogs up.

On softness, plastic wins, and it's fair to say so. King Arthur Baking's sourdough guide makes an airtight bag its top choice after the first day, and The Kitchn rated the original plastic bag highest in a two-week test on supermarket sliced bread. On mould, it's the weakest: in the 2021 Foods study, bread in a plastic bag sat at about 90% humidity and the wheat pan bread grew mould first, from day four or five. CHOICE warns that plastic “encourages bread to go mouldy faster”.

Sources: King Arthur Baking, “How to store sourdough bread” (6 Nov 2024); The Kitchn, “I Tried 7 Ways To Store a Loaf of Bread”; Alpers et al., Foods (2021), bread storage study; CHOICE, “Foods you do (and don't) need to refrigerate”.

My recommendationRight for soft sandwich bread. Wrong for a crusty sourdough, where you lose the crust and take on more risk of mould.

7. The fridge

In a hot, humid week the fridge feels like the safe place, and plenty of Australian kitchens keep bread there all summer.

The fridge really does slow mould: in the 2021 Foods study, no mould was detected on bread kept at 8°C. The same study found fridge temperatures speed up staling, and CHOICE says bread in the fridge will “go stale much faster”. NSW's Love Food Hate Waste says storing bread in the fridge is not recommended.

Sources: Alpers et al., Foods (2021), bread storage study; CHOICE, “Foods you do (and don't) need to refrigerate”; NSW EPA, Love Food Hate Waste, “How to store”.

My recommendationHonestly good at slowing mould, and the worst place on this list for texture. In a tropical wet season, method 5 is the better fallback.