Bake or buy ahead of time and keep those dinner rolls fresh in the freezer.
Welcome to The Cheater’s Guide to Thanksgiving. While there are plenty of tips out there for folks making scratch desserts and artisan loaves, the Cheater’s Guide focuses on the person who could use a helping hand—even from some unconventional sources. Some might call it “cheating” (like that’s a bad thing), but there’s nothing wrong with using modern technology and supermarket know-how to help you make a bangin’ traditional feast—with much less of the traditional work.
Soft rolls for mopping up gravy, crusty loaves slathered with salted butter—bread is an essential part of the Thanksgiving meal. It’s also one of the easiest to push off or forget. Maybe we’ve been thinking about fresh bread the wrong way. It turns out, one of the chillest helpers in your kitchen can keep your bread in perfect shape for weeks. Take some of the pressure off and freeze your Thanksgiving bread today.
Bread purchased or made too early can be overtaken by moldy bits and staleness, even in one of those aesthetically cute wooden bread boxes. Timing out freshly baked loaves on the day-of is almost sure to give you agita. I much prefer to remove the risk. Whether you’re making your own sourdough, cutting out biscuits, or rolling out 24 spongy milk bread rolls, your freezer is going to be the very best storage container. Here’s how I freeze bread, and how I reheat it to be as good as fresh-baked.
Keep it in shape
Fortunately, many foods keep well in the freezer. Unfortunately, that makes my freezer a bit like a clown car—there’s a befuddling and slightly alarming amount of stuff crammed in there, and yet there’s always room for more. In itself, that’s a good thing: A full freezer holds its temperature and conserves energy, but it can spell trouble for the delicate shape of soft, fluffy bread.
Since baked bread is made of many small, delicately arranged air pockets, the shape can be easily compressed. If you cram room temperature bread in with the rest of the clowns, it’ll freeze solid in that smashed shape and stay that way even after thawing. For the bread’s sake, freeze it first, uncrushed, for 30 minutes before consolidating.
To do that, clear space and remove obstacles. Then put breads on a sheet tray with nothing stacked on top of them. Once they’re solid, you can pack them into a freezer bag. Make sure to squeeze out as much air as possible to prevent freezer burn.
Make a home for your bread
For the organization-minded, it helps to have a defined Bread Spot in your freezer that only houses your precious loaves. Using a freezer-safe container to sequester your breads away from the other stuff works well.
For irregularly shaped artisan breads, like boules or batards, wrap tightly and place them in a wide plastic tub-like container that fits on the top shelf of the freezer. Something like this airtight bread container would work well—a long tubular container like this is also great for holding sliced bread and small rolls or biscuits, and its stackable shape keeps your freezer organized.
Prevent freezer burn
To be clear, freezers are a boon to at-home food preservation and effectively reduce waste, but there is a trade-off to the wondrous machine: freezer burn. While your food is safe from humidity-induced mold growth, freezer burn can happen to anything you put in there as long as it contains moisture, including bread.
Freezer burn on bread changes the appearance to pale and dry, while ice crystals have collected on the surface or inside the storage bag. This is the visual result of sublimation, when ice turns directly into water vapor. The freezer keeps a dry, cold environment and, as BBC Science Focus explains, “Ice sublimates in an effort to equilibrate with the [vapor] pressure of air in the freezer.”
Technically it’s safe to eat freezer burnt food, but the taste and texture can suffer, and to me that defeats the whole point of eating. To prevent freezer burn, minimize the food’s exposure to the dry, circulating air of the freezer. Foil wrappings or thin stretch plastics are not airtight.
Use specifically labeled freezer bags (They’re usually thicker than others), or try doubling up. Put the frozen bread into the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal it. Then, if you’re using one, slide it into one of those close-fitting storage tubes.
Reviving your frozen bread for dinner
Bringing your breads back to life is easy and fast. You have a couple options, and it’s really up to preference. Remove your rolls, biscuits, or loaves from their ice kingdom.
Thaw and bake. Place them, still wrapped, on the counter for 30 minutes to thaw. Unwrap the bread or rolls and put them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and put them in a 350°F oven for five to 15 minutes, depending on the bread’s size.
Bake from frozen. Place the bread (still frozen) directly on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake the bread in a 350°F oven for 10 to 25 minutes, depending on the bread’s size.
The crusty loaf bath. For breads with a hearty, chewy crust, like baguettes or sourdough loaves, run the frozen bread under the sink faucet quickly to wet the crust evenly and completely. Bake the bread in a 400°F oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the bread’s size. This splash of water will introduce more moisture to the oven and bring the thick crust back to it’s original crackly state.
If you’re curious whether your bread has fully reheated or not, I suggest cutting it in half to find out. However, if that’s not an option for whatever reason, you can also use a toothpick or paring knife to poke into the center. If you feel a hard interior, then give the loaf or roll a few more minutes in the oven. When you crack into the roll at the Thanksgiving table, it’ll taste and feel like it did the first day you baked it—back in early November.