I usually make different varieties of italian bread, zopf too (it's called tresse here), chewy bagels, and sweet breakfast breads (cinnamon)
I've been at it since I was a kid, trying out creations on family.
There's something warm and cosy about making bread.
The reason for bread getting hard is plain: water is evaporating. My guess is that the volume:surface ratio of the bread determines how fast the process is.
I bake my bread quite long in a quite hot oven, so that the crust is thick and hard.
As a result, the bread doesn't get dry too quickly (also, I keep it in a bread crock, which helps to keep the crust "crusty").
Putting it into a Tupperware just turns it into a limp biscuit.
If the bread is slightly stale (a few days), tear up roughly, baking tray, olive oil and oiled woody herbs like sage plus a few stamped-on garlic cloves and make croutons (giant ones). Serve in a bowl with overriped squashed tomatoes, firm sliced tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper. Let it sit for at least an hour before serving.
I suggested all of these uses for old bread on side 3 of this thread and didn't even get one
little "thanks".
Boo hoo.........
Also, bread and butter pudding (as Leni mentioned). Stale zopf or brioche is good for this.
Also, stuffing to go with a roast . . . stale bread can act as a base and soak up nice things like egg and cream.
Take your old bread, diced in into tiny cubes, sauteĢ in butter till golden, then tip in seasoned egg and cream mixture. Stir till just set.
My MIL used to flavour the eggs with Maggi sauce (a bit like soy) and this gave it a very nice, distinctive flavour.
You could also use truffle oil on the scramble - totally yummy!!
If you have access to a good baker then you really have struck it rich over here. We particularly like Muller in Nafels - whose Klosterbrot is absolutely fantastic.
I prefer to buy bread from Aldi. Very few extra ingredients... simple and cheap bread like the bauernbrot and ruchbrot.
And since Zopf I also liek Zopf and it is overpriced. I buy the Aldi Zopf flour and use the recipe there with fresh eggs and milk from the farmer down the street. You can't buy a Zopf that tastes that good! Even better than the Tiptopf recipe!
this is a dead old thread but I didnāt want to start a new one.
I noticed something strange today: yesterday I bought a bread from Coop (Bio pagnol dark). I put it into the cupboard.
This morning when I opened the cupboard, the smell of catfood hit me. The dry catfood. Only Iāve not had a cat for years so I was startled.
After I took the bread out the smell was gone soon after.
Where is the connection I wonder? Was the dry-food I fed to my cat of such good quality or is the coop bread crap? It tastes normal, I mean, the way a supermaket-bought bread normally tastes.
I suspect that the smell of cat food permeated the cabinet over the years, but that most items you put in the cabinet were in closed packages or boxes and didnāt absorb the smell. Bread can absorb odors. The humidity from the bread could have absorbed the lingering cat food smell from the cupboard, and that smell dissipated after you left the bread out for a while.
eeerr, no, my cabinets do not smell from anything (and itās a Foster steal kitchen, nothing can linger there if you keep things clean).
And it was not the bread that absorbed a smelt of catfood, it rather caused a smell of catfood in the cupboard which left with the bread.
So unless coop kept the bread with catfood before selling it, this theory doesnāt work.
The grains used in the bread probably have a similar smell to the stuff used in cat food and being confined in a small space probably made the odour more concentrated.
Ah, I read that as the bread smelled of cat food, not the cupboard.
so not the bread is funny - the cat food used to be of excellent quality 
I definitely prefer that exlanation.