Stale Baked Goods Trick

You know what I hate? When I buy a half dozen bagels from the Bagel Factory at Price Chopper…and then I forget to slice them and put them into individual plastic baggies so they don’t get stale. Yeah, I did that this week. I went to grab a bagel for lunch yesterday, and it was very difficult to slice because it had gotten hard.

It’s happened with other baked goods before – rolls, cookies, brownies, etc. – and I hate throwing out food. We’ve started throwing some of it into the woods for the wildlife to eat, but I still hate doing it.

Yesterday, I remembered a trick my mom had told me about when I was younger. And it worked.

Place your stale baked goods into an airtight container, like Tupperware or Rubbermaid. Grab a piece of sliced bread, like Wonder bread, and seal it up in the container with the rest of it. Let it sit for a few hours – or even overnight – and the moisture from the bread will help freshen up your baked goods.

I checked my box of bagels this morning. The slice of bread had turned stale. My bagels weren’t precisely as good as new, but they were soft enough to cut. And once my bagel was all toasted up, since that evaporates some of the moisture anyways, I couldn’t even tell there was anything wrong with it.

So it is possible to save your stale baked goods, as long as you have fresh bread in the house!

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.