You might want to try par-baking and freezing, instead of just freezing the cooked loaves. At the peak of my sourdough-ratholing last year, I scaled up my recipe size so that I was making four loaves (batards weighing in at around 650-700 grams), and then par-baking and freezing three of them for use over the next week or two.

My method:

1. Do whatever it is that you do before baking a loaf of bread

2. Bake the loaf for around 2/3rds the target time. In my case, this is about a half hour. I bake these loaves at 200°C, on a baking stone and covered with a huge aluminum salad bowl to sorta emulate a steam oven. At the end of the half hour, the crust is still white due to the bowl, and just starting to go brown on the tips of whatever cuts I added.

3. Take the loaf out and let it cool for a couple hours

4. Seal it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer

5. Proceed with life for a time

6. When in need of more bread, take a par-baked loaf out of the freezer and put it on the counter, and pre-heat the oven to 200°C

7. Once pre-heated (~20 mins later, let's say), put the still-frozen loaf (sans plastic!!) into the oven uncovered, and cook for another 15 mins

8. Take it out to let it cool and enjoy

IMO a par-baked and then frozen loaf is noticeably better than a single-baked loaf, at least when using a home oven. I speculate that this is because a home oven needs a longer total baking time than a (hotter, steam-injected) commercial oven to fully bake + get the right crust, and that extra time turns into a drier crumb. But I further speculate that the par-bake-and-freeze technique preserves the crumb, since the crumb is really pretty much done by the time the 30-min par-bake is over, and the crumb ends up spending a good chunk of the 15-min finishing bake just de-thawing rather than drying out.

Crusty sourdough freezes just fine. I wouldn’t want to freeze Wonderbread style soft sandwich loaves, though.

Depends on the sausage I guess, and on the defrosting process. Personally, I don't like to freeze any meat - chances are that it had been frozen already, and refreezing it will ruin it.

My mom freezes everything to save money, and there is an element of emancipation for me to be able to not do that, but generally speaking I just find it a destructive practice from a flavour perspective.

I eat defrosted bread quite often and I can't notice a flavor difference, at least for sandwiches.

And stale or moldy bread, my alternative, is very easy to notice.

I would have agreed with you completely until I got married and discovered that it's not the freezing that does it, but the thawing. It's all in how you thaw.

Now I pull the loaf out a few hours before it's needed and let it thaw at room temperature in the pantry. Definitely leave it sealed.

I laugh now thinking about how as kids we put the bread in the microwave on defrost. That makes some damn nasty bread :-D

Maybe keep a toaster facing out in the freezer she can put the bread into? Will never be out of shape.

If you have the space, a second deep freeze is a game changer. You can often find them for cheap or even free, the ones from the 90s seem to last forever.

Have you tried toasting it when you take it out of the freezer?

The change in consistency happens most quickly at temperatures in the single digits, that’s also why bread in the fridge gets stale faster. But toasting the bread reverts the process. So the trick is to defrost in the microwave and pop it in the oven (if still in a loaf) or toaster (if sliced). Put some water on the crust to prevent it from baking too much. Works wonders on yesterday’s rolls too.

We have delivered batches of 7 loaves from a local bakery every 2-3 weeks, and of course freeze them. The trick is to, as soon as I can after receiving them, put the loaves with their original bag inside also a large freezer bag, so they are double-bagged, and right into the freezer. When taking it out, toast it as needed, either so lightly that it just thaws, or as toasty as you like if you want toast.

While nothing is like a chunk or slice of bread still warm from the oven, this is more than good enough and often not distinguishable from the bread as received. One note is that this is pretty high-density bread, so it might not work as well with 'fluffier' breads. In any case, the double bagging does work for me to eliminate that ucky freezer burn taste, or at least put it off so that it takes 2+months in the freezer for it to appear.

I've also found for cakes and pastries that wrapping in cling wrap, then aluminum foil tightly sealed by rolling the edges together, then a freezer bag works well for many months.

Yeah, I wish there were more local bakeries in UK, I mostly gave up on trying to find good inexpensive bread.

Dunns Bakery in Crouch End is decent if youre close.

Does anyone actually eat the heels?

My flatmate, who is a baker by trade, violently disagrees with putting bread in the fridge. He argues that the condensation in the bag/box you store it in increases the chance of mold and interferes with the bread's structural integrity. He recommends to store bread in a paper bag in a bread bin somewhere on your counter top, but a clay baker or something similiar will also do the trick. I'll add, that it's perfectly legit to store bread in the fridge if it would go bad otherwise. Just one of the usual nitpicks tradespeople have regarding their line of work.

You have to thaw it before you eat it.