As tasty and as healthy as sourdough bread is, there is just one problem with it. It takes a lot of time to make it, and not everybody has enough time to make a new loaf every day. One way to solve this problem is to make more bread. But will this work? How long does sourdough bread last?
Sourdough bread will last for around 3 to 5 days if wrapped and stored correctly. If you keep your sourdough bread out in the open it will last for 2 days, but if you store it in a sealed container and keep it at room temperature it will last for up to 5 days.
But as you can imagine, freshly baked sourdough bread won’t taste the same and won’t have the same texture as one that is 5 days old. There is a difference between freshness and how long a bread will last. So let’s have a look at that, after which I will tell you what methods I use to make my sourdough bread stay fresh for longer, and one special trick that will allow you to store sourdough bread for months and keep its taste and texture intact.
How Long Sourdough Bread Keeps Its Freshness
While sourdough bread will last for 5 days, this is not to say that it will keep its freshness for 5 days as well. After a while the sourdough will lose some of its freshness, taste, and texture. So let’s see how big the change will be.
First 24 hours – In the first 24 hours the sourdough bread is at peak freshness. The exterior is crispy, the interior soft, and it will have the specific taste and smell of a freshly baked loaf. Overall this is the best time to eat the sourdough bread.
Days 2 to 3 – After 24 hours the exterior of the bread will lose its crispiness and become chewy, the interior will be less soft. And the freshly baked aroma will be gone. One other thing that will change is the taste, it will become more sour, which depending on your taste this might be a good thing. Overall the bread is still good, but it has lost some of its texture.
Days 3 to 5 – After 3 days or so, the texture of the bread is not that great. The exterior will start to get hard and the interior dry, and the sour taste will become even more intense. At this point the bread is still edible, but it definitely lost some of its appeal. One way to make the bread more enjoyable at this point is to toast it.
On average, sourdough bread will last for 5 days, but sometimes it can be good for even longer. And while it can lose some of its appeal at this point, toasting it will do more than make up for it. So my advice is to not hurry and throw out the bread after 5 days, first you should check if the sourdough bread has actually gone bad.
How Do You Know When Sourdough Has Gone Bad?
It’s very easy to tell if a sourdough bread has gone bad, as the signs are hard to miss.
One sign that a sourdough bread has gone bad is the smell. Sourdough bread has a very unique smell that is hard to mistake, and while it might not be everybody’s favorite smell, you definitely can’t call it a bad smell. But when a sourdough goes bad, the smell changes completely, and it’s bad, really, really bad. So there is no way to mistake it for the normal sourdough bread smell.
One other sign, that is even harder to miss, is mold. As soon as sourdough bread has gone bad, mold will start growing on top of it, and slowly making its way to the inside, so it can be quite hard to miss.
So, if you don’t notice any bad smell coming from the sourdough, and you can’t see any signs of mold, then your sourdough is still good.
How to Make Sourdough Bread Last Longer
5 days, compared to other types of bread, is quite a lot. But realistically speaking is not that much. So is there anything that can be done to make the bread last longer than that?
Here are my 5 tips on how to make your sourdough bread last longer:
- Don’t cut the loaf until you want to eat it. While it is tempting to cut your loaf as soon as you can, to see how the inside is, and to feel that amazing smell of fresh bread, you shouldn’t do it. The Longer you keep your loaf whole the longer it will stay fresh.
- Let your loaf cool completely. This tip is closely related to the last. To put it simply, if you don’t let your dour great after you take it out of the oven, it will be uncooked on the interior, and this will make it go bad faster. How long you should let the loaf rest depends on its size. If you want a table on how long you should let it rest you can check out my article: How Long Should I Let My Sourdough Bread Rest? (+Pictures).
- Don’t store your bread in linen or paper bags. Both linen and paper bags will absorb the moisture in the bread, and as a result it will go stale faster. I would recommend you to use a sealable plastic bag. This way all the moisture in the bread will stay in place.
- Ferment your sourdough as long as possible. When sourdough ferments it increases the increase in acetic and lactic acids in the bread. And those acids will keep mold away from your bread.
- Add a bit of oil to the dough. The fat in the oil will increase the shelf life of your sourdough. You can either use sunflower oil if you don’t want to change the taste of your bread, or olive oil, which will slightly change it.
Does Sourdough Last Longer if Kept in the Fridge?
One thing that I didn’t mention in the list above is keeping the bread in the fridge, which is something a lot of people do in order to make their bread last longer. The only problem with that is that it doesn’t work, and it has the exact opposite effect.
In the fridge a bread will become moldy at a slower rate due to the temperature, that is true. But it will also go stale faster. So overall I wouldn’t recommend you to put your sourdough bread in the fridge.
So the fridge is not a good place to store your bread, if you want it to last longer. So what about the freezer?
How to Store Sourdough Bread to Make It Last for Months
This might surprise you but keeping sourdough bread in the freezer will make it last longer and it will keep its taste and texture.
I have an entire article dedicated to how you can do this, which you can find here: How to Freeze Sourdough Bread Without Losing Taste or Texture. And here is the short version.
Here are 7 simple steps that you need to follow in order to freeze your sourdough bread without losing taste or texture:
- Let the loaf cool – The first thing that you want to do is to let the loaf cool off completely. If you were to use a loaf that is still hot or warm, it would produce a lot of humidity in the freezer, and in the end, you will only be left with a soggy slice of bread.
- Slice up your bread – As trivial as it might sound, this is an important step that you shouldn’t skip. If you want to freeze the whole loaf you will definitely fail. It’s impossible to freeze big chunks of food at home. The big frozen things that you see at the supermarket are usually frozen using liquid nitrogen(−320.8 °F). If you were to simply put the loaf in the freezer it will freeze, but it will lose its entire flavor and texture.
- Lay the slices on a tray – The reason why you want to first lay them on a tray, instead of simply putting them in a bag and being done with it, is because we want to obtain an even temperature distribution. If the slices were one over the other they wouldn’t be able to freeze correctly. And they would be stuck together.
- Place the tray in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes – From personal experience, I’ve noticed that the fuller my refrigerator is the more time the sourdough bread needs to spend inside. So if your refrigerator is relatively empty 15, maybe even 10 minutes might be enough. But if it’s full you might need to let it stay for 20 minutes.
- Take out the slices and place them in a plastic bag – For this step, you want to move as fast as possible so make sure that you have a resealable plastic bag near you.
- Remove air from the bag – After you place the slices in the bag you should try to remove as much air as possible, this will make your bread keep its flavor and texture intact.
- Store in the freezer
Defrosting the Sourdough Bread
My favorite way of defrosting sourdough bread is to put it in the toaster for just a couple of minutes. This way the bread will be warm as if it had just been taken out of the oven.
Or if you want you can leave it in the toaster for a few more minutes and toast it.
You could also just leave your bread on the countertop for 10 minutes to slowly defrost, both methods work just as well.
How Long Can I Store Frozen Sourdough Bread?
On average sourdough bread can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months.
The amount of time any kind of food can spend in the freezer depends on how well it’s sealed. This is why most frozen products at the supermarket are so tightly packaged.
So if you manage to completely suck out the air from the bag containing the bread you could store it for up to a year or more. But based on what most people can do at home without any special equipment, 3 months is the average.
Final Thoughts
On average sourdough bread will last between 3 and 5 days. But you can easily make it last longer by doing the following things:
- Letting the dough ferment for longer
- Adding some oil to the dough
- Letting the bread rest enough after talking it out of the oven
- Not cutting the bread until you eat it
- Storing the bread in a sealable plastic container
By doing those things you can easily add up another 3 or 4 days to the shelf life of your sourdough bread.
But if you want to keep your sourdough bread for even longer, the only thing that you can do is keep it in the freezer, by following these steps:
- Let the loaf cool
- Slice up your bread
- Lay the slices on a tray
- Place the tray in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes
- Take out the slices and place them in a plastic bag
- Remove air from the bag
- Store in the freezer
And keep in mind that a bread that hasn’t gone bad is not the same thing as fresh bread. A sourdough loaf will usually stay fresh for 24 hours, after that it will slowly start to get stale. Which doesn’t mean that it’s gone bad, but its texture will change, and the taste will get more sour. And there is nothing that you can do to prevent this. The only way that you can make the bread more pleasant to eat, if it’s completely stale, is to toast it.
Common Questions
Can You Leave Sourdough Bread Rest for Too Long?
While it is possible to leave sourdough bread rest for too long, nothing as bad as not leaving it to rest enough will happen.
When the bread has rested for just enough the inside will still be warm, and there will still be some moisture inside that gives it a little bit of springiness and greatly improves the texture and taste.
If you let the bread rest for too long some of its qualities will be lost and the crust will become slightly harder. The inside won’t be as soft and as tasty, the difference in texture is much more noticeable than the change in taste. But even so, it’s a lot better than cutting the bread too soon.
What Is the Best Way to Cool Down Sour Bread?
Using a cooling rack can help your bread cool down faster, without affecting the bread in any negative way.
This is because a cooling rack doesn’t affect the temperature of the bread in any way, it simply lifts the bread up, reducing the contact surface, thus allowing the bread to cool down faster.
So basically the cooling rack doesn’t make the bread cool down faster, it actually removes obstacles that make it cool down slower.
Before I bought a cooling rack I used to put two cups upside down on the table and place the loaf on top of them. This is not entirely as efficient as a cooling rack, but it had good results. SO if you don’t have a cooling rack you can try doing this.