Bread and Baked Goods

Bread is a daily food, not a stored one. Store bread with its preservatives keeps about two weeks on the counter and months in the freezer; homemade bread is a two-day loaf. The pantry versions are crackers, hardtack, tortillas and, above all, flour and a way to bake, which is why the grains and flours page matters more than this one.

For keeping: crackers and pilot bread in sealed packs, flour tortillas (days on the counter, weeks in the fridge, months frozen), and a bread with preservatives if you want a loaf in the freezer. For eating: whatever you like, and freeze what you will not finish in two days. Hardtack, flour and water baked dry, keeps for years and is what sailors lived on; it's the bread of the deep pantry and the recipe is three ingredients.

Bread keeps best at room temperature in its bag, or in a bread box, in a dry kitchen. The fridge slows mold but speeds staling, so it's a trade worth making only in humid weather. The freezer stops both: freeze a loaf sliced, in the bag, and pull slices as needed; they toast from frozen. Crackers stay in the sealed sleeve until opened, then in a jar with a desiccant. Hardtack in an airtight tin, bone dry.

Mold on bread is a whole-loaf problem: the threads run through the crumb far past the green or white spot, so the loaf goes, not the slice. A sour or musty smell without visible mold means the same. Hard and dry is stale, not spoiled; it is croutons, bread crumbs, French toast or bread pudding. Crackers that have gone soft are stale and crisp up again in a low oven.

Bread is calories and comfort, about 80 calories a slice, and the thing most people miss first when it's gone. Stale bread is never wasted: toast it, crumb it, or cube it into soup. For the long term, learn one bread you can bake without electricity: a skillet flatbread or tortillas from flour, water, salt and fat take ten minutes on a camp stove, and hardtack (3 cups flour, 1 cup water, 2 teaspoons salt, baked in two long low sessions until dry) keeps for years.

Bread needs nothing from the power grid. A loaf in a dead freezer thaws in a few hours and is fine once thawed; eat it over the next couple of days. The oven is what you lose, which is the argument for a skillet flatbread and a camp stove.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.