Does A Breadbox Really Keep Your Bread Fresh?

There are times when whipping together extraordinary fare is a blissful kitchen experience, but there are other occasions when you just want to fill that hole in your stomach. That is the perfect time to excite the taste buds with an upgraded peanut butter and jelly sandwich or even a humble piece of buttery cinnamon toast. Yet it always seems when you need your bread the most, you reach into the breadbox to find it has started to go stale, or worse, it is sporting colorful specks of mold.

The truth is that the method of wrapping your bread in plastic wrap is still the best way of preserving bread, at least to many minds. Nathan Myhrvold, founder of Modernist Cuisine and co-author of "Modernist Bread at Home," highlighted this fact when he explained why alternative techniques of keeping carbs light and fluffy don't always succeed. "We experimented with a lot of storage methods, including terra-cotta containers and expandable bread boxes," he said. "None of the airtight options performed as well as plastic wrap would, and the bread dried out quickly in the options that weren't airtight."

Ultimately, upgrading your Thanksgiving leftover turkey sandwich with tasty gourmet focaccia is only an option if you store it properly, and plastic wrap reigns supreme in this regard. A breadbox, while an adorable accent for your kitchen counter, is semi-airtight at best and won't do much to control the quality of your appetizing loaves. In fact, these containers were never expected to keep bread at its best in the first place.

Myhrvold had a little history lesson in store as we delved into why a breadbox might not be the best choice to keep your pumpernickel soft and chewy. Were these boxes intended to manage quality, they would have been designed to be airtight. Yet that was never their proposed role. According to Myhrvold, "A bread box, for instance, was originally meant to keep rodents away from the bread while storing it neatly: it succeeds in those goals but doesn't extend the bread's shelf life." No one wants Ratatouille helping himself to their three-ingredient banana bread, but at least a breadbox can do more than deter pests.

Although a breadbox isn't a foolproof method of keeping your loaves in top form, it does function well as a storage area if they are wrapped up inside. It can be the eye-catching centerpiece of a bread station in your kitchen. For instance, when it lives right next to your toaster with a butter tray and seasonings like cinnamon sugar, it creates a warm, cozy feel in your culinary sanctuary. A breadbox might not have much use as a way to keep your carbs from going stale, but it can still serve to make your kitchen feel like home.