Alright, if you’re new to eating sourdough bread, especially in this part of the world, we’re going to give you quick education on how to store sourdough bread in KL Malaysia.
Getting to know Sourdough Bread in KL Malaysia
A couple of things you need to know about the nature of sourdough bread.
First, it is a loaf usually made with wild yeast, instead of baker’s yeast, which means it needs to undergo a process of fermentation to give it flavour and rise.
Good sourdough bread is made out of just four ingredients, flour, water, sourdough starter and salt.
There are enriched sourdough bread as well that comprise of ingredients additional to the original four, but a consistent characteristic of authentic sourdough bread is that they are not made with preservatives, which explains their shorter shelf lives.
That’s understandable, because everything made naturally and fresh has a trade-off with quick expiry, but it’s a sacrifice we’re more than willing to make 😀
If you’re new to sourdough bread, here’s an article explaining its benefits.
Store Sourdough Bread in KL Malaysia
Anyways, coming back to the question at hand. Storing sourdough bread in KL is a bit trickier than if you come from colder countries, where you can just leave your loaf out in the open.
In Malaysia, the humidity is high, hence bread goes mouldy faster. I would say that sourdough bread in Malaysia would have an average lifespan of 4 to 5 days. Shorter still if you don’t store it well.
Alright, so there are two main ways to store sourdough bread in KL Malaysia.
Store sourdough bread in KL method #1: At Room Temperature
The first, is at room temperature. This method is suitable if you think it’s within your capability to finish the loaf in 4 to 5 days.
When you leave bread out in the open at room temperature, it goes hard. This is because the starch molecules in bread, take water molecules from the bread itself and the surrounding air and begin to crystallize. Due to this reaction, bread becomes harder and appears to be dried out.
This is especially so after you slice it because once sliced, the crust is no longer there to protect the inside of the bread from the moisture in the air.
So to avoid bread reacting with the air moisture (of which Malaysia has a lot of) from happening at an accelerated rate, you’ll need to get rid of the water in the bread’s environment.
And the best way to do that is to keep your exposed sliced loaf in an air tight container, or better yet, a Ziploc with as much air pushed out as possible.
If you’re planning on doing that, do NOT slice your entire loaf before you Ziploc it because it will just expose more surfaces of the bread to the air, accelerating the bread hardening.
Slice ONLY when you want to immediately consume it.
Store sourdough bread in KL method #2: Freezing
Use this method if you’re a real slow eater of bread and one loaf will take you weeks to finish. Or you just bought a bunch of loaves and would like to slowly consume them.
In this case, you’ll need your bread to last for a couple of months.
You will need to freeze them.
Why not refrigerate?
I’ll tell you the reason refrigerators are bad for bread.
When bread is stored in a cold (but not freezing) environment, recrystallization occurs, whereby starch molecules take water molecules from the refrigerator air and crystallize.
This recrystallization process is fundamental to bread staling. And because there’s so much ambient moisture in the fridge itself, it actually speeds up bread hardening and staling, compared to leaving it out at room temperature.
Freezing, however, dramatically slows the process down and doesn’t change the starch molecule structures the way fridging does.
So when you freeze your bread, it may last up to a month or two and still taste fresh when you thaw it out.
Tips to storing your bread in your freezer
Tip #1: Slice it before you freeze it.
And keep the slices in a Ziploc before you toss them into your freezer.
Try to separate your slices because if they are frozen stuck together, they will be hard to separate when you want to remove a few slices.
Tip #2: Unfreezing
When you would like to eat it, take out a couple of slices and let it thaw at room temperature for about half an hour before consuming.
If you’d like to toast them, you can probably do so after 10 minutes of thawing.
We recommend pan toasting your loaves with olive oil. Flavour with a crunch 😉 You’re welcome!
And that’s how you keep your sourdough bread slices fresh and long lasting in Malaysia. If you have any more questions on sourdough bread in KL Malaysia, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Your questions could be our next article’s topic 😀
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See you in our next article! Thanks for reading, and happy baking!
