The Best Way To Store Banana Bread When You Want To Finish It Soon
Most of the time, youre going to want to try to finish a loaf of banana bread in a few days. If you know that youre going to try to finish it within two or three days, then it should stay good so long as youre storing it properly.
Some people might get the idea of storing it in the refrigerator, but that would actually be a bad thing. Banana bread is going to go bad way quicker if its refrigerated, and this means that you should keep it on the counter.
However, youre not just going to be keeping it on the counter without it being covered up. To get the best results, youre going to need to cover the bread with plastic wrapping to ensure that it doesnt dry out.
You could also use something such as aluminum foil and get similar results. Doing this should allow you to keep all of the flavor and texture in the bread so that you can enjoy it to the fullest.
Essentially, storing banana bread on the counter is the best thing to do so long as youre going to eat the bread in a short amount of time. You only want to freeze the banana bread when you know its unlikely that youll have time to finish it.
How To Make Your Own Stuffing Bread Cubes
Think of this recipe as a method. I give you lots of guidelines and tips and tricks but you can change the bread you use and match the seasonings to your stuffing recipe and menu. Here are the basics the rest of the details are in the recipe card below.
- Cut your bread into cubes: ½ 1 inch.
- Place the cubes on cookie sheets.
- Add some olive oil and seasonings and mix .
- Put in preheated 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, checking frequently and mixing around to ensure even cooking.
- Let them cool and store in airtight container or even freeze for 2-3 months.
Can You Freeze Yeast
Plenty of bakers find that freezing their yeast is a great way to store it for long periods of time.
Any kind of yeast can be frozen to extend its life. Frozen yeast can last months or even years longer than if they were to be stored in a cupboard or fridge. It should be tightly sealed in an airtight container for the best results.
Yeast can be frozen whether youre using dry or fresh. In order to freeze it most efficiently, it should be kept wrapped up tight to prevent any air from getting to it.
Yeast needs to be stored properly in order for it to survive after being placed in the freezer. If there is airflow getting to the yeast, it likely wont be alive when you come to use it.
Theres more about freezing yeast further down.
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Rehydrating Your Banana Pulp
I never rehydrate snacking bananas because theyre so good just the way they are. But to get the correct liquid ratios for bread, youll want to make a banana pulp by adding water. Putting dry banana powder in your bread mixture will just soak up the other liquid, drying out the loaf.
To start the hydration process, put your freeze dried bananas into a bowl or measuring cup. If they werent crushed before, you may want to do so now to help with rehydrating.
Here, Ive measured out 1/2 cup of powder. I used a regular measuring cup and dumped the powder into this liquid measuring cup.
It doesnt take a lot of water to rehydrate the powder. Its easiest to just run a trickle of water from the faucet while stirring until you get a gelatin-like consistency.
I only added 1-2 tablespoons of water. As you can see, the measurement barely goes above the 1/2 cup line. The consistency should be something like this. It looks kind of gross, but tastes delicious!
Foods You Can Freeze Dry
Weve had our freeze dryer for several years now, and weve found that its possible to freeze-dry a ton of foods for storage. And its fun to try new things and see how they turn out. Even so, Ive also found that its a lot of fun to see what other freeze dryer owners are trying and to see how theyre loving what comes out of their freeze dryers.
So, without further ado, here are 79 foods you can freeze-dry with ease many of which weve done successfully ourselves. There are a few that we havent tried but our research and chatting with other freeze-drying fans show that it works well.
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Fruits
Now, here are a few notes based on things Ive learned freeze-drying these fruits or from friends who have.
Apples Applies are best freeze-dried in slices or small pieces. They can be plain or coated with something like cinnamon or caramel.
Avocado Not a fruit Id put in every fruit salad, but it freeze-dries well. I add lemon before freeze-drying to minimize the discoloration that happens.
Bananas Bananas are a popular freeze-dried option in slices. They can discolor easily, so you may want to pre-treat them with citric acid.
Blackberries These are great for adding to shakes or eating as is.
Cherries These will need to be prepped first, too, by being pitted and halved. Delicious!
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Resources For Cooking With Freeze
Id always suggest practicing cooking with your freeze-dried food stores on a regular basis because going from your regular routine to long-term emergency food can be a lot all at once. If youre experienced cooking with your stored food, it makes the transition much easier.
Still, its helpful to have guides and resources on hand as you work through the transition.
- Rehydration Calculations Made Easy is a reference book that tells you how to rehydrate and cook with every freeze-dried food imaginable. Every type of freeze-dried food you can buy, plus quite a few you cant. It includes so much variety that many are only available if you have a home freeze dryer and are making your own freeze-dried food. If youre storing freeze-dried food, you should have this book on hand.
- The Preppers Cookbook: 300 Delicious, Nutritious and Life Saving Meals covers cooking with your food stores, including freeze-dried food and other more common pantry staples. Plenty of recipes keep things interesting so you never have to cook the same meal twice.
- The Meal in a Jar Handbook provides recipes and guidance for making shelf-stable meals in a jar from your long-term food storage. Pre-mixed soups, casseroles, baked goods, and more allow you to create your own meal kits for a fraction of the price of buying ready-made emergency meals.
Forget Stale Bread: How To Oven
Niki Achitoff-Gray is the former editor-in-chief at Serious Eats and a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She’s pretty big into oysters, offal, and most edible things.
In my family, stuffing is the undisputed star of the Thanksgiving table. We want it fluffy and custardy on the inside, crisp and browned on the outside, and in a great enough volume that we’ll have leftovers for days. In other words, we take the components pretty seriously, and it all starts with choosing the right bread and treating it just right.
Most recipes will tell you that your very first step is setting your loaf out on a counter for a few days and letting it get nice and stale. But you know what? Screw most recipes. Not only will staling occur more readily at refrigerator temperatures, staling is an annoyingly, unnecessarily time-consuming way to make bread dry.
Drying bread is a matter of extracting moisture through evaporationthe crumb’s structure remains intact, but it becomes stiffer and crisper thanks to all that moisture loss. Staling, on the other hand, encourages the migration of moisture from swollen starch granules into airy pockets within the bread. Those starch molecules then recrystallize, yielding a texture that’s tough rather than cracker-y. Worse, that moisture often stays trapped inside the bread’s structure, for a loaf that’s moist and stale at the same time. The result? Leathery, chewy bread.
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Storing Freeze Dried Bananas
We use different storage solutions for our freeze dried food, depending on the intended use. For snacking purposes, we throw our bananas into a big jar along with any other fruits we recently made.
For specific purpose of making banana bread, you can store the pieces in a mylar bag exactly as they come out of the freeze dryer. But I dont recommend this because its unlikely that youll want to use all of your bananas at once, and youd have to reseal the bag each time after opening it.
I found that throwing them in a jar is the best storage solution. Crushing them rather than putting them in whole will save a huge amount of space.
Because freeze dried bananas are hard and dense, its difficult to crush them by hand. So I threw them into a food processor to make a powder. This method just makes it easier to store the fruit in a more compact container, if you so choose.
These jars are my favorite for storing powdered freeze dried ingredients.
Whether you use a bag or a jar, be sure to put an oxygen absorber in the container. You can sometimes get away with skipping the oxygen absorber for short-term storage, especially with fruit. But its better to use one anyway to avoid ruining your product.
Tip: Freeze dried powders absorb moisture much more quickly than large pieces of freeze dried food. So it helps to be quick when youre opening any containers of freeze dried powder.
How To Prep Bananas For Freeze Drying
For snacking purposes, we prep our bananas by cutting them into slices. This makes them easier to just pop in your mouth. For banana bread purposes, I wanted to have a more accurate idea of how much banana I would need to rehydrate for each batch of bread.
With that in mind, I just sliced them down the middle lengthwise and laid them out on the sheets. This bunch of 8-9 bananas filled up two trays with room to spare.
Bananas can be freeze dried in the same batch as other fruits without it affecting the flavor. If you have room left over, make the most of it by throwing in some other fruit on the remaining tray.
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How Long Can You Freeze Dry Yeast
You can freeze dry yeast for around 6 months. The thing that makes dry yeast a little trickier to freeze properly is that you must be wary of moisture, air, and temperature all at once.
Dry yeast is dormant, and too much moisture, air, or temperature can bring it out of that state, spoiling it over time.
Therefore, we suggest keeping all three variables as low as possible to ensure you get the maximum time out of your yeast.
How Long Does Dry Yeast Keep in the Cupboard?
Dry yeast will keep in the cupboard for around 12 months or until the expiry date. It must be kept in an airtight container, away from direct sunlight.
Measuring Freeze Dried Bananas For Banana Bread
My banana bread recipe calls for 2 full bananas. If you left your bananas intact, just grab the right number of pieces to equal two full bananas.
If you crushed/powdered your freeze dried bananas like mine, youll need to use a measuring cup or kitchen scale to get the right amount:
- 2 bananas = 1/2 cup of powdered banana. If there are large chunks in your crushed powder, it may affect your measurement.
- 2 bananas = about 45 grams of banana powder. Because freeze dried ingredients are practically as light as air, its necessary to have a sensitive kitchen scale that can give you an accurate reading.
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What Happens To The Dough While In The Freezer
As mentioned in the opening of this article. Freezing bread dough kills about 30% of the yeast. This is not the only effect freezing has on your dough.
Along with the yeast dying you also have the issue of your gluten structure weakening.
To combat these two issues you should
Doughs made with Rye flour, for example, have a lower gluten content in them so they would not fare well in the freezer. If you just love your rye bread and would like to freeze it try using a lower percentage of this rye flour. About 20% max. You will still get that great rye flavor while maintaining a gluten structure in your dough.
Lastly, a bread baked from a dough that is frozen will most likely not have the volume a fresh dough bread would have. Even though you have increased your yeast, the gluten structure will still be weaker and will not allow the bread to expand in the way a fresh dough would. If the size of the loaf is a concern to you try to increase your recipe about 15 20%. This should help balance out the size issue.
For a simple way to increase your recipe, you should use a scale that offers a bakers percentage function. This will allow you to increase your recipe easily without having to start calculating your ingredients all over.
Can You Freeze Dry Cookies
Yes, all kinds of cookies can be freeze-dried and stored for years in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers or eaten right away. The cookies will have a dry crunch and the flavors are preserved very well so should continue to taste good even years later.
How to Freeze Dry Candy, Snacks, and Desserts at Home
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Drying Store Bought Bread For Stuffing
I am drying a loaf of sourdough on my counter. There is a lot of it, so I will need to store some of the dried cubes. My question is, how do I store it and how will I know if it is no longer good to cook with? Also, is it better to just put it in the oven to dry it rather than on the counter?
There are two types of bread for stuffing. If you’re aiming for the dry type, a very low oven would be better.
If you have room in your freezer, that would be a good place to store the bread you’re planning to use later to make stuffing.
I dry cut cubes, spread in a single layer, in a low oven for 10 mins, then let the oven cool down before removing the bread. The bread will tell when it’s gone off by developing a rancid oil smell. That’ll take months to a year or more.
Cube it, bake at 200°F for 2 hrs, cool then store in ziplock . Make sure it’s really dry first. Depends on initial moisture content of bread.
I just left a loaf of sourdough from T. joe’s, chopped into big-ish cubes, overnight on the counter in one layer on a pan. They were dried the next morning and everyone loved the stuffing I made with it, so that’s the way to go. Not really complicated. As long as your bread is dry/stale, your stuffing won’t be too mushy, especially if you toast off the top
Stale is not the same as dry. Drying in an oven as the other answers suggest is much preferable. Stale bread often isn’t dry at all.
How To Store Bread In A Refrigerator
Storing bread in the refrigerator can be a tricky thing. Keeping it cool will slow down the mold process, but the colder temperature will change the consistency of fresh bread.
According to Daniel Gritzer of SeriousEats.com refrigeration of bread speeds up the re-crystallization of starch molecules in bread. His research indicated that bread stored in a refrigerator in an air-tight bag still became stale. The bread degraded not due to loss of moisture, but the retrogradation of the starch molecules to the original crystalline structure.
However, Daniel was only testing freshly baked bread made without preservatives.
Now we know that store-bought sandwich bread will usually have preservatives added to enhance freshness.
As a result, we choose to keep commercially manufactured bread in our refrigerator. And it usually lasts for 7 to 10 days before it starts to get hard, moldy or go stale. We keep it stored in the manufacturers plastic bag with a twisty tie on it. We only buy whole grain bread.
Most serious bread foodies agree that storing bread in the refrigerator is not the best. But they all agree that if you want to keep bread longer storing it in the freezer is the best way to go.
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Can You Make Fruit Powder From Freeze
Freeze dried fruit will typically yield a finer powder than dehydrated fruit. What is this? Use fresh, frozen or even freeze dried fruit to make fruit powder. You can purchase freeze dried fruit and simply blend it into powder without any additional steps, or use an oven or food dehydrator to dry your own fruit.
What Foods Cant Be Freeze Dried
Ready to see which foods cant be freeze-dried? Here they are along with some notes Ive learned by experience and research.
Oily and fatty foods Due to the nature of fat, it doesnt freeze-dry well. It just goes rancid over time. Foods with fats in them can still be freeze-dried, but its smart to expect those foods to have a shorter shelf-life. You can read more about storing oils and fats in this article I wrote.
Sugary foods Due to the structure and nature of sugar, its harder for them to freeze-dry. Always test super sugary foods for moisture before storing them in mylar bags.
Alcohol Alcohol doesnt freeze-dry at all. Attempts end in huge messes. However, if a dish has a small amount of cooking alcohol in it, it should be okay.
Bones Bones dont freeze-dry. I havent tried them in our freeze dryer apparently, Im not as adventurous as other homesteaders because this idea/info came from someone else.
Butter Butter wont freeze dry on its own. If its an ingredient in something, it can work for short-term storage via freeze-drying.
Chocolate Pure chocolate wont freeze-dry. If its smaller pieces that arent 100% cacao, then it may freeze-dry as an ingredient in something else.
Chai tea I havent tried this, but others assure me it doesnt work all it does is create a huge mess.
Water Really. People have tried this. During the freeze-drying process, all the water gets removed, so really why bother?
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