I Tried 4 Frozen Breads & The Best is Soft & Fresh-Tasting
There's nothing like tearing into a freshly baked loaf of bread from the local bakery. But, fetching a fresh loaf daily isn't a luxury that most of us have time for. So, keeping your favorite bread in the freezer is a great way to ensure that you always have something to toast in the morning. Plus, the freezer helps keep bread tasting fresh so you can simply pop a slice into the toaster and butter it up. No need to defrost.
Though you can certainly freeze any kind of bread that you buy, whether it's pre-sliced white bread or an artisan-made gluten-free baguette, some brands always keep their bread in the freezer aisle. Freezing helps lock in flavor, texture, and moisture, so the bread doesn't go stale while it sits on store shelves.
This means that manufacturers of frozen bread can use fewer or no preservatives. Many of the sliced and packaged shelf-stable loaves at the grocery store are made with stabilizers and other additives that slow the natural process of staling.
Bread that contains nuts and seeds, such as sunflower and flax seeds, are also susceptible to faster spoilage. Seeds contain volatile oils that can start to taste rancid, and baking the bread speeds up this process. So to keep both the wheat and the seedy mix-ins tasting as fresh as possible, many seeded bread makers choose to sell their products frozen.
For all of these reasons, there is a surprisingly robust lineup of frozen bread products at many grocery stores, and it can be confusing to know which will taste the best and have the doughy texture you're looking for. That's why I personally tasted four loaves of bread from the most popular frozen bread brands. I toasted a slice from each loaf and ranked the products according to looks, taste, and texture.
Here's how the frozen bread fared, in descending order from my least favorite to my top pick.
Carbonaut Seeded Gluten Free Bread
As soon as I opened this bag of bread from Carbonaut and attempted to remove a slice from the frozen loaf, I noticed the odd texture. The crust crumbled away from the rest of the bread almost as soon as I touched it and it was difficult to peel off a piece from the rest of the loaf to toast.
The look: The Carbonaut bread has an odd purplish-white color. The bottom of the loaf is heavily seeded with whole flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and millet. There are also seeds distributed throughout the crumb of the bread. It's extremely light and airy. I did notice some odd white spots on one side of my slice that only seemed to appear after toasting. It's unclear what the white substance is, but I'm guessing it could be a pocket of starch (the first ingredient is "resistant tapioca and/or resistant potato starch," which in itself is odd).
The taste: Avoiding the suspicious white spots, I sampled the bread and found it to be pretty tasteless. It's just so light and spongy that it feels almost like eating air with a few seeds. I was also put off by the crumbly texture.
Royo Artisan Bread
This bread is specifically designed to be low-calorie, with just 30 calories per slice and two grams of net carbs (that includes a whopping 11 grams of fiber). The bread is made with resistant wheat starch and wheat protein instead of whole grain or refined flour, which gives it a slightly spongier, chewier texture and flavor from your typical loaf of bread.
The look: This bread looks like your standard sliced wheat loaf. It's uniformly light brown with a darker crust, but once you pick up a slice, it's clear that the texture is different. The bread is super light and airy with a lot of stretchiness to it.
The taste: I was surprised by how similar the Royo bread tasted to a regular slice of store-bought whole wheat bread. However, the texture is so light that it's less satisfying than a normal wheat-based slice.
Ezekiel Sprouted Whole Grain Bread
This is a hearty, healthy loaf from a brand that's been around for decades. The loaf in the classic orange packaging from Food for Life is made with six varieties of grains and legumes that have been sprouted, or soaked in water to soften up the outer bran. Sprouting grains is meant to increase their digestibility and the amount of nutrients that eaters are able to absorb.
The look: Ezekiel bread slices are decidedly wheaty. They're a standard size and shape with a brown crust and speckles of grains (presumably millet) visible throughout the crumb.
The taste: I love whole wheat bread, and this loaf does nothing to hide its healthiness. You can taste the full gamut of grains and legumes and the bread is also denser and more structured than the other loaves I sampled. This is the most substantial and filling of the frozen breads in this taste test. It also has the most protein, with five grams per slice.
Rudi's Organic Rocky Mountain Sourdough Bread
This sourdough bread tastes freshly baked and has the gentle stretch and tangy flavor of a high-quality loaf of fermented bread from a bakery.
The look: The slices of this pre-sliced loaf are extremely uniform. They're white, with a light golden crust and a dense, uniform crumb. The bread toasted evenly and is firm, but not hard or overly crusty.
The taste: Rudi's frozen bread tastes as close to bakery fresh as I imagine is possible coming from the freezer. The sourdough adds a delicious tang that none of the other loaves had, and the bread is slightly savory. It has a bit more sodium than the other products, but nothing alarming, and if anything, the added salt enhances the flavor and texture of the bread.
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