It isn’t unusual to find more than one kind of bread in our house at any given time. The common sliced loaf bread is a staple but, often, you’ll find any one or more of these breads in the kitchen: focaccia, danish/croissants, pan de sal and French bread. If tortilla can be classified as a bread, we sometimes have tortillas too. Not because I’m a compulsive bread baker — I wish I were. I’ve read and heard so many testimonials about how kneading dough is both a relaxing and comforting experience. The few times I kneaded bread dough by hand, I quite liked it. But whatever satisfying feeling there had been was often overcome by panic and worry at the mess I always manage to create when handling flour.
The reason for the variety of bread in the house is personal preferences. Everyone in my family has his favorite.
My younger daughter, Alex, is addicted to focaccia (above). For me, nothing tastes or smells better than a hot croissant or danish (below). In fact, anything made from puff pastry and whoever invented puff pastry has my eternal gratitude. My husband and older daughter, Sam, are pan de sal lovers. French bread is something we buy on occasion — often, when focaccia is not available.
It’s not that there’s some kind of exclusivity. I mean, if there’s focaccia in the house, everyone enjoys it just as much as Alex. Same with danish and pan de sal. But when we go to the supermarket as a family and lots of varieties of bread are available, we often end up with a package each. Wasteful, you say? No. We consume bread fast. What we often have leftovers of is the loaf bread. But that’s easily solved by toasting them, making croutons or bread crumbs. With the rest, well, there are ways of making them last for several days.
If, like us, you don’t rely on the neighborhood bakery for your everyday supply of bread — the pan de sal in the bakery in our subdivision are not that good — and you prefer to buy a few days’ supply each time for convenience, it’s nice if the bread can be served warm, moist and still soft even after a day or two, right?
Yeah, well, you can freeze them. But you’ll have to wrap them tightly or place them in air tight containers to make sure that they don’t get wet and they don’t absorb any smell or taste of the raw fish or meat that are in the same freezer with them. Even if they are in different freezer corners, if the wrapping is loose, they will still catch the fishy/meaty smell after a while. And even if you have a box of baking soda (our tried and tested freezer and fridge deodorizer).
And when you need the bread, take them out of the freezer to thaw, heat in the oven and serve warm. It works for us.
Hi Connie! I freeze bread too and it still taste really good after thawing it. I dont have to freeze pandesal since it does not last long in our house. Btw, I tried your corn beef pandesal and it was really good. I tried putting chicken/pork adobo which were left over and they were good too! Thanks for your wonderful website. Its part of my routine to check it everyday. God Bless!
My favorite is garlic bread from Sbarro but I normally stock on loaf bread as well for our daily baon sandwiches. And you’re right, even if there are leftover loaf bread, you can still do something about them, like pudding di ba?
This is also happening to us. My husband preferred a whole wheat bread and my daughter loves soft pandesal while I like white bread. Every time we go to grocery, we always end up with three kinds of bread.
Thanks for the tip on how to store them correctly to be able to expand their storage life.
The bakery very near our house in Pasay (almost across the street, but not quite) makes the best pan de sal in my opinion. Crunchy on the outside, and soft inside, and just has the right taste: sometimes we just munch it without needing any “palaman”.
Hi Connie! I just wanted to recommend Glad’s Press and Seal for bread.
You can wrap them up in the press and seal and place them in non-airtight containers, and they’ll still not absorb odors. 
hi connie! would like to know where you buy your focaccia? my husband and i like it a lot. (even my 5 y/o daughter does). but we only get to eat it at italian restaurants–which can be expensive. thanks!
great recommendation, barbie. it might make environmentalists unhappy but it’ll save consumers a lot of grief.
sheila, shopwise bakery sells focaccia. the ones in photo were from SM Hypermarket, frozen section. Comes in different flavors, sarap.
i love breads as well! croissant being my personal favorite… soft, crunchy, flaky, smothered with butter!
i sometimes bake my own focaccia, different kinds of loaves and cinnamon rolls. but sad enough, i couldn’t make a decent croissant! so i just buy croissants by the dozens, wrap them in aluminum foil, store in freezer then pop it in the oven when i’m ready to eat them.
we never run out of Gardenia wheat bread sa ref, staple na sa house yun e. i like italliani’s focaccia! other kinds of bread, we’d buy in breadtalk or delifrance.
if we get a chance to buy sa bakery, i like spanish bread, ensaymada, kababayan, pan de regla (?) and mongo bread!
Hi Ms.Connie! its my first time to browse your website and i love it… i love to bake and cook too… just wanna ask if you have the recipe of focaccia bread? like your daughter, i’m fond of it too… maybe its much better if i know how to bake it. do u have?