- Preheat your oven to 300º F (150º C), wrap your bread in foil, and set it in the oven for 5-15 minutes. If the crust is soft, unwrap the foil and give it an extra 5 minutes.
- Or, pour a shallow layer of water into a steamer and bring it to a boil. Place your bread in a steamer basket and steam it for 5 minutes.
- Alternatively, wrap your bread in a damp paper towel and heat it in the microwave using 10 second intervals.
Heating in the Oven
Preheat your oven to a low temperature. Set your oven to 300ºF (150ºC). The heat will restore most stale bread, although the effect will only last a few hours.
Add water only if the crust is hard. Even stale bread still contains plenty of water. It feels dry because the starch molecules have linked up and trapped the water. This means you don't need to add water to the crumb of the bread. If the bread has a hard outer crust, flick water onto it, or run it under the cold tap if extremely stale. If the bread turned dry from overheating, or if it was exposed to air, it has lost some of its water. Wet the whole loaf to restore moisture.
Wrap the bread in foil. This prevents steam from escaping, keeping the moisture trapped in the bread instead.
Heat until soft. If you dampened the bread, wait until it no longer feels soggy. Depending on the size of the loaf and whether or not you added water, this could take 5–15 minutes.
Unwrap and heat for another five minutes if the crust is too soft. If the bread is soft but the once-hard crust is squishy, take off the foil. Keep heating for another five minutes, or until you've restored the crust to the right texture.
Eat soon. Heat "melts" the starch molecule structure to release the trapped water, but also speeds up staling once the bread cools down. The bread will only last a few hours at most before it turns stale again.
Steaming
Bring water to a boil in the base of a steamer. Pour a shallow layer of water into the pan. Heat over high until the water reaches a rolling boil, then remove from heat. If you don't have a steamer, you'll need a colander that sits on top of the pan, and a lid that can fit over the colander. This methods adds less heat than the oven, but more moisture. The extra moisture is most helpful when the bread is very stale and hard, or if it was left out unwrapped.
Place the stale loaf in the steamer basket. Place the basket over the steaming pan and cover with a lid.
Leave covered until the bread is soft. Give the steam at least five minutes to soften the bread.
Microwaving
Slice bread to eat right away. Microwaves do soften bread, but the results aren't perfect. Within a few minutes, the bread usually turns rubbery and even tougher than before. This is the fastest method, but it's best to save it for an immediate snack. This happens because the microwave boils away some of the water. The escaping steam pushes the starches into a denser structure, and leaves the bread dry. Slow heating in small increments can reduce this effect, but it's difficult to find a sweet spot that's still hot enough to soften the bread.
Wrap in a damp paper towel. Lightly dampen a plain, white paper towel. Wrap it around your bread. This adds more moisture, and traps some of the steam in the bread to keep it soft.
Heat in ten second intervals. Depending on how strong your microwave is, the bread might already be soft after ten seconds. If not, try again, checking frequently.
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