Bread is a staple in my kitchen, as I love a slice of buttery toast in the morning and making elaborate sandwiches at lunchtime, but I hate buying big loafs as they tend to go stale quickly. No matter where I store bread, it always seems to dry out and become as hard as a brick after just a few days.
While this may be excellent news for the pigeons and seagulls in my garden, it unfortunately means that I end up wasting a considerable amount of money on my food shop. I had almost given up on buying bread and resigned myself to eating healthy salads for lunch every day, until I discovered that keeping bread fresh is simple, as all it takes is a stick of celery.
It may sound utterly bizarre, but it was my Mum who told me that an old-fashioned food storage method was to add a little celery to a bread bag, as it helps keep it hydrated.
Bread goes stale because moisture is being drawn out of the surface over time, and this tends to happen more often in summer due to the warm, dry weather.
Kitchens tend to be quite hot no matter the time of year as we have lots of devices like ovens, air fryers or microwaves that will heat up the room and spoil bread.
However, celery contains a lot of water which slowly leaks out of it, and it will help keep the air around bread humid so it stays fresher for much longer.
I decided to try placing some celery in a bag of bread after treating myself and doing a Marks and Spencer food shop last week, and I have been delighted with the results.
All I did was cut up a celery and stuck a few pieces at the bottom of a bread bag and few another pieces at the top.
I then closed the bread bag and stored it in a cupboard in my kitchen away from any hot appliances, as keeping the bread somewhere cool increases the chances of it staying fresh.
It has now been over a week, and my bread is still soft and springy without any sign of it becoming stale.
I was worried storing bread with celery would affect the taste, but I have not noticed any difference at all and wish I knew about this simple trick before wasting so much money.
I placed the celery in the plastic bag that the bread came in, but for better results,it is worth trying the method with a bit of baking paper instead.