Why You Should Store Cookies With a Slice of Bread

Cookies taste best fresh, which is why you should eat as many as you can when they come out of the oven. If that doesn’t sound practical, there’s a way to ensure your baked goods keep their soft, chewy consistency for days. Next time you store a batch of the baked goods, toss a slice of bread in the bag before sealing it up.

According to Food Network, a plain slice of bread is the key to keeping cookies from getting hard and dry. After sitting on the counter for a few days, cookies lose the moisture that made them soft and gooey the day they were baked. That’s why it’s a bad idea to refrigerate most baked goods; the air inside your fridge is dry, so it makes cookies go stale faster than they would otherwise. (This is also why leaving poultry uncovered in the fridge leads to crispier skin.)

A sealed bag or air-tight container with bread inside is the ideal environment for fresh cookies. Bread holds a lot of moisture, and as it leaches that moisture it raises the humidity of its immediate surroundings. The amount of humidity released by one slice of bread is enough to slow your cookies’ moisture loss without promoting mold (though you should still check for mold just in case, especially after a couple of days).

Exposure to air is the number one reason cookies go stale, so this method won’t work unless the container is sealed tight. But if it’s done properly, the trick will keep your cookies soft and delicious well into the week. Whether you’re baking or cooking, here are more hacks to use in the kitchen.