Why You Should Think Twice Before Putting Bread In The Microwave

Say you bought a big, beautiful baguette from the grocery store just this morning and hadn't had the time to put it to use. It's now late afternoon and not only has it lost its initial crispness, it's gone limp and spongy. If your first instinct is "just throw it in the microwave" ... no judgment there. But we're here to tell you it's probably the worst way to refresh bread (it's not a coincident bread is starred in our list of foods you should never reheat in a microwave).

So what actually happens when you microwave bread? While it may seem warm and toasty at first, give it a couple of minutes and it toughens into floury bricks. Feel the crust while you're at it, too — instead of that shattering crunch, it just hardens into something flat and unappealing.

Here's the science: microwaves heat food by "jiggling" the water molecules deep within the bread. That water quickly turns to steam and pushes outward. At first, the starch soaks it up, making the bread feel soft and warm. But as it cools, the starch crystallizes again and forces the water back out. Suddenly your baguette is rock-hard, with a crust that's rubbery and chewy instead of crisp.

Your best bet? Warm it in the oven. Since the heat comes from the outside in, the crust is the first to re-crisp thanks to the Maillard reaction. Just watch out — without a little help, the oven can dry out your bread. Fortunately, there's an easy hack that you can use to counter this problem: spritz the loaf with some water before you throw it into the oven. As the water is heated up and becomes steam, it helps the crust stay flexible just long enough for the bread to open up and the starches to set into a thin shell. When the bread's out of the oven at last, this shell will harden as it cools into the golden, crackly crust of your dreams.

Don't have an oven? You can also use an air fryer (which shares a lot of similarities with a convection oven) to reheat. Or, if worst comes to worst and you've got neither of these tools, just toss the bread right onto the stove in a pan. You can toast it directly or, if you'd like something softer, wrap it in foil and let it warm on its own. Any of these methods will work far better than the microwave that, while convenient, isn't worth the bread-shaped bricks that you get in return!