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How to Get Bread Out of a Pan When Stuck

How to Get Bread Out of a Pan When Stuck

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Baking a fresh loaf of bread is something that many people like to do as often as possible. You might enjoy making fresh bread so that you can use it to make sandwiches, but many people make sweet bread to enjoy as a type of dessert.

You might want to make some banana bread when you have bananas that are close to getting too ripe. Whatever the case is, it’s great to be able to make homemade bread and enjoy it with your family.

Sometimes you might have issues getting the bread out of the pan, though. Have you recently pulled a pan out of the oven and discovered that it was almost impossible to remove the bread?

Many people have issues with bread getting stuck in pans. There are some good methods that can help you to get the bread out, or simply prevent it in the first place.

Allow the Bread to Cool

Loaf Pan

Often, you’ll find that people try to remove bread from the pan too fast. If you try to remove the bread from the pan before the bread has had time to cool, then you likely won’t get the best results.

The bread is going to release steam as it cools and this can slightly shrink it. It makes it so that the bread won’t be so tightly packed into the bread pan.

Sometimes exercising a bit of patience will be all that is necessary. Give the baked bread a few hours to cool down and then see if it’s easier to remove.

You should probably try this first because you might not need to use any fancy techniques. If you can remove the bread from the pan without having to do anything but wait, then that will certainly be ideal.

Use Cold Water

Filling Sink with Water

It’s very possible that you’ll be able to get the bread out of the pan if you use cold water. Cold water can help the bread to release steam and this will make it easier to slide it out.

To do this, you’re going to need a pan that is larger and deeper than the pan that you baked your bread in. Otherwise, you could use a kitchen sink to get the job done.

Grab the pan with your oven mitts on and submerge it into the cold water. Go slowly and don’t just drop the pan into the water.

You want to hold the pan in the cold water like this without allowing the water to get on the bread. It would be a shame to ruin your bread by accidentally exposing it to water.

After five minutes have passed, you should be ready to move to the next step. Hopefully, this will loosen things up and make it easier to slide your bread out of the pan.

Turn the Pan Upside Down to Remove the Bread

Turn the Bread Pan Upside Down

Next, you’re going to want to turn the pan upside down to try to slide the bread out. Gravity will help you get it out without it being a big deal.

Of course, you don’t want to drop the bread onto the floor or drop it from a height that will damage the bread when it lands. You should place a platter underneath the pan and then hold it a few inches above the platter.

Start gently shaking the bread pan to try to coax the bread out. Eventually, the it should plop out onto the platter and everything should be fine.

So long as things went well, the loaf of bread should be intact. There are situations where things won’t go smoothly, though.

For instance, if the bottom of the pan had a lot of the bread become stuck to it, then there’s the potential that the loaf of bread will come out a bit broken up. You don’t want there to be chunks of bread still stuck to the pan, so hopefully, this will not be an issue.

Using a Butter Knife Might Help

Butter Knife

Sometimes using a butter knife might help you to get good results. If you tried holding the pan upside down and it just isn’t working, then that’s a sign that the bread is very stuck.

If you take a knife and use it to try to pull the bread away from the sides of the pan, then that can help you to get it out. Just gently glide the knife along the sides of the pan to see if it’ll make a difference.

After you’ve pulled the bread away from the sides of the pan, you’ll be able to try turning it upside down once more. Use the same method mentioned above and see if the bread comes out.

If all went well, then this will be all that you’ll need to do to get the bread out of the pan. If this didn’t work, then your bread is really stuck quite badly.

It might be the case that you won’t be able to get it without ruining the bread. Sometimes people use pans that aren’t well-suited for baking bread and things wind up sticking more than usual.

Try Using a Non-Stick Pan

Non-Stick Bread Pan

In many ways, preventing the bread from sticking to the pan in the first place is the best way to go. You can avoid problems and ensure that your bread will turn out better.

One of the best ways to get consistent results is to use a non-stick pan to bake bread. You can easily find loaf pans that use a special type of non-stick coating at most department stores.

Pans like this are going to be very helpful when you’re baking things. You’ll likely not want to go back to using standard loaf pans once you’ve seen how much easier non-stick loaf pans can be to use.

Non-stick pans are pretty standard, and they don’t cost a lot of money. It’s in your best interest to own a few of them if you like to bake regularly.

Use a Non-Stick Spray

Greased Pan

Using a non-stick spray is going to help you to get the bread out of the loaf pan as well. If you have a standard loaf pan, then you can spray it down so that the bread won’t stick to the pan.

Cooking spray is a common item that you can buy at the grocery store. It is inexpensive and it works very well to help you keep things from sticking to various surfaces while you’re trying to cook.

This will come in handy when you’re baking bread for sure. Many people use cooking spray even if they have a non-stick pan just to be on the safe side.

Having a non-stick spray that you can use will come in handy for more than just baking bread, too. It’ll be useful for making eggs in the morning or ensuring that a frozen pizza doesn’t stick to a pizza pan while baking.

It might be a good idea to ensure that you buy a cooking spray that isn’t flavored. There are non-stick sprays out there that are flavored, and the most common one that you’ll find will likely be the butter-flavored spray.

Using a flavored spray could slightly throw off the taste of your bread. It’s better to use cooking spray with no flavor so that you don’t alter the recipe in any way.

Final Thoughts

If you have been having issues with bread sticking to the pan as of late, then you can try to do some things to get the bread out of the pan easier. It might be the case that all you will need to do is wait it out.

Allowing the bread to cool for a few hours might be enough to loosen things up and make it easier to remove. This is because steam will release over time and the size of the bread will shrink just enough to make it easier to pull it out.

If that doesn’t work for you, then you could try holding the bread pan in cold water for five minutes. This can help to cool things faster and it should make it easier to slide the bread out so that you can enjoy it.

Another technique involves using a butter knife to pull the bread away from the sides of the pan. This can be a useful thing to do and it does help to make it easier to get the bread out without encountering any issues.

Turning the bread pan upside down is nice because it allows gravity to do the work. Just ensure that you have a platter underneath the pan and that you don’t hold the loaf pan too high above the platter.

You can prevent the bread from sticking to loaf pans by taking certain steps, too. For instance, buying a non-stick loaf pan is usually enough to ensure that bread doesn’t stick.

The non-stick cooking spray also helps immensely because it can keep the bread from getting stuck and it’ll make it very simple to slide the bread out of the pan. This cooking spray is very affordable and it’s good to keep it stocked in your kitchen.

You know what you can do to get better results now. Hopefully, you’ll be able to enjoy your bread without having to stress much about having it stick to the loaf pan moving forward.

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