A Box For One’s Bread

Our tired ol' bread basket

I’m in the market for a new breadbox. We’ve grown tired of this old picnic basket in which we’ve kept bread and baked goods for too long now. It gets rattier by the year and has begun to unravel and fall apart. Pointy ends here and there poke holes in the bread bags and get those science experiments started much faster than I’d like. While it has its charms, it’s never been such a good place to keep bread. However, it will make great storage for the cat toys once a new breadbox is in place.

The search has not been an easy one. You’d think that somewhere within the confines of Burbank I would be able to locate a suitable vessel for stashing bread, but after visiting six stores today, I am still without one. Each clerk I asked, responded, “We don’t carry them any more,” which makes me wonder if bread storage has become unfashionable in the rush to fill retail space with kitchy bar ware and ceramic roosters of all sizes.

I did locate two breadboxes actually, one at each of two stores, meaning the choice at each place was between “take it” and “leave it.” One of them was slightly more commodious than an Altoid tin but not nearly so handsome. The other appeared to have been beaten by a two-year-old with a metal toy truck. Call me picky, but I don’t want to have to wail on my bread with a blunt instrument to make it fit into a similarly shaped box.

If we chuck the old basket before finding a replacement and leave bread sitting on the counter, it will become stored in a different and completely unhelpful vessel:

The Cosmo model: keeps bread but doesn't give it back.

I’ve considered buying a pair of boots, so that I can glue corkscrew, elbow and sea shell macaroni all over the box, spray paint it gold and press it into service, but that seems a bit of overkill. Granted, I could also store a baguette in each boot. Hmm…perhaps I should rethink this idea.

At this point, we’re faced with a wall-mounted breadbox that is too expensive for the job, but because of its incredibly tight seal, it is capable of keeping bread fresh longer than the basket does:

One incredibly expensive breadbox

We’ve tried this before, back when Cosmo first arrived. We’d left a surplus of baked goods on the counter, and he munched his way through everything from bagels to baguettes to a spinach croissant faster than you can say, “Bad kitty!” The drawback is that we seldom use the microwave, so we forget what we’ve stashed in there until, seal or no seal, it is way past desirable.

So the search goes on. I’m not picky, not really. In fact, that boot box idea is beginning to sound fairly appealing.