When you go to the grocery store and venture to the bread isle to grab your favorite slice, do you ever wonder when it was actually made and packaged.  I found out recently that the twist tie on the package is the time stamp for the bread’s freshness.  Bread is made and delivered 6 days a week, Monday through Saturday.  Each day of the week is assigned a color coded twisty tie for the end of the loaf.  The colors are alphabetically sorted through the days of the week. The bread in your grocer should have the freshness marked as follows:

Monday - Blue

Tuesday - Green

Wednesday - Orange

Thursday - Red

Friday - White

Saturday - Yellow

Now, if you decide to purchase these presliced breads, make sure you give them a light squeeze.   If the bread bounces back, then it is probably fresh.  When purchasing whole loaves, try cutting a chunk from one end and then obtaining your slices from the middle of the loaf, returning the end you cut back to the loaf before storing it.  Also, be sure that the packaging that the bakery placed the loaf in doesn’t have small holes. If so, you may want to transfer the unused bread to a storage bag.