How to store bread and Top 2 bread bin Review
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After 2 decades of trial and error, this is how homemade bread stays fresh the longest — plus a genuine review of the Tupperware Breadsmart against a trendy Jamie Oliver bread bin.
An earlier post covered sourdough bread and a few other bread recipes. Now it’s time to cover how to store that delicious homemade bread so it stays fresh and lasts longer. 3 different storage methods have been in use for the past 2 decades, alongside a review of 2 top brand bread storage systems.
Table of Contents
1. Store Bread at Room Temperature
Bread is crusty and tastes best on the first day, but loses some of that taste on the second day and starts to soften. It’s best kept at room temperature — around 20ºC — for no more than 2 days, away from direct sunlight, in a cool, dry spot like a pantry or bread box. A good quality bread box is genuinely worth investing in.
Storing bread in the fridge draws out moisture, and it goes stale about 3 times faster there than at room temperature. This happens through a process called retrogradation, where the starch molecules crystallize and the bread turns tough.
2. Store Bread in a Good Quality Bread Bin
Storing bread in an airtight box tends to make it go moldy quickly. Some airflow is needed to keep bread fresh while still preventing it from drying out. Fresh homemade bread lasts longer in a bread bin than store-bought bread does. For more than a decade now, the Tupperware Breadsmart has been the storage of choice, and it’s held up genuinely well.
3. Freeze the Bread
If there’s more bread than can be eaten in time, freezing is the best way to store the excess. Freezing drops the temperature enough to stop the starch from recrystallizing and going stale.
- Store it in plastic freezer bags or heavy-duty foil — lightweight household foil isn’t suitable for freezing.
- Label and date it, to avoid it becoming a mystery cube later.
- Consider slicing bread before freezing, since slicing frozen bread is difficult, and slicing after thawing isn’t much easier.
A couple of extra loaves sometimes get baked and frozen whole here. When needed, the bread thaws overnight, then gets reheated whole in hot air at 150°C for about 10 minutes — best used up fairly quickly after that.
Choosing and Comparing Bread Bins
Supplies List
- 1. Room temperature storage
- 2. Ventilated bread bin
- 3. Freezer bags or foil
- Tupperware Breadsmart
- Jamie Oliver bread bin
Instructions
Choosing a Bread Bin:
Many master bakers recommend storing bread in a good bread box. Plastic bags were never appealing for storage here, and store-bought bread packed in plastic tends to go bad quickly too — luckily, bread in Switzerland is often sold open or loosely packaged.
The First Bread Bin:
The bread-baking journey started with a wooden bin from IKEA. Despite years of use, the outer varnish smell never fully faded, which led to switching to the pricier Tupperware Breadsmart back in 2008.
Tupperware Breadsmart:
Despite being plastic, this bread bin has genuinely earned every penny it cost. Tupperware plastics are BPA-free, and since it’s not used for heating food, that’s not a concern anyway. Every part dismantles easily and is dishwasher safe, aside from the condense control mesh attached to the shutter lid — a small feature that provides airflow inside the bin, letting the bread breathe without going moldy, and keeping it fresher for longer. Bread has lasted up to 3 or 4 days in this bin without any mold at all, unlike store-bought bread, which dries out faster.
Tupperware’s Downside:
The main downside is the price — CHF 80 for the bin, plus another 25 CHF for the matching bread cutting board, which stores neatly underneath and slides out easily for use. Tupperware backs its products with a lifetime warranty for normal wear and tear, which is a real plus, especially factoring in the money saved from not throwing out moldy bread.
Jamie Oliver Bread Bin:
A more recent purchase, driven by growing concerns around plastic. This trendy, vintage-looking bin from Jamie Oliver won out on design alone — the lid doubles as a bread cutting board, designed to catch crumbs too. The lid is Acacia wood, cleanly finished with no rough edges, and the tin itself is painted steel with 2 handles. It wasn’t cheap either, at 115 CHF.
Bin Specs Compared
The Jamie Oliver bin weighs 2.82 kg, sized at 44.3 x 25 x 18.5 cm — compared to the Tupperware, which weighs around 1.3 kg with the cutting board included, at 38 x 25 x 19 cm. No lifetime warranty info is available for the Jamie Oliver bin, and it has no condense control system — the wooden lid, being a natural material, along with the non-airtight tin, presumably does that job instead.
A Few Bread Storage Tips
Skip the airtight seal: some airflow keeps bread from going moldy while still slowing down drying out.
Freeze in labeled, dated bags: heavy-duty freezer bags or foil, clearly labeled, prevent frozen bread from becoming an unidentifiable mystery loaf.
Slice before freezing: it’s much easier than slicing bread frozen or after it’s thawed.
Consider counter space before choosing a bin: a bigger bin isn’t always better — it needs to actually fit the amount of bread typically stored.
Which One Won Out
After a lot of deliberation, the Jamie Oliver bread bin ended up going back, with the Tupperware Breadsmart staying in regular use. It mostly came down to size — typically just 1 loaf gets stored at a time, and even though the Jamie Oliver bin was only 6 cm wider, it still took up noticeably more counter space than needed. It would’ve been nice if it came in a second, smaller size.
Being genuinely used to opening the shutter and grabbing the cutting board with ease also played a part in sticking with the familiar Breadsmart in the end.
Watch the Video
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