22 Jun 2020
Worldwide, we see that consumers make fewer visits to shops, spend less time in stores and have a tendency to stock up on certain products. This applies also to bakeries and bakery aisles.
Freshness is a crucial element for consumers. That is why we have gathered some tips and tricks to help you give a longer shelf life to your breads, allowing your customers to continue enjoying great tasting fresh bread:
Tips and tricks for a longer shelf life
- To give more moist to the crumb of your bread, use a higher oven temperature and a shorter baking time.
For breads of 650g, rather than 35 minutes at 220°C or 428 F, opt for 30min at 235° Celsius or 455 F still ensuring a completely baked bread-crumb! - Whatever the type of bread you are baking, the quality of the packaging plays a crucial role in preserving its freshness.
If you do not need a crispy crust you can opt for a plastic bag, which can give you 4 to 5 days of shelf life.
Otherwise a paper bag is recommended, which will grant you from 3 to 4 days of shelf life. - Slice and pack the breads when they have a core temperature of 35° Celsius or 95 F, no warmer to avoid condensation-moisture in the bag, not much colder to avoid excess of moisture loss during cooling.
- Change your regular bread improver to a Soft'r improver.
This will extend the shelf life of your bread and will not require any changes to the mixing, scaling and shaping of your dough. - Limit handling of your breads in store. As consumers like to see what they are buying, fill a rack with packed breads and show the unpacked breads at the top, as you can see on the picture.
This will increase your customers’ trust and reassure them amid covid-19.
