What do you do?

=== Now what do you do when your bread is still warm and you want to go to bed? I know it is a silly question. ===

There is no crying in football, and no silly questions on The Fresh Loaf!

In that situation I wrap the bread in one of my extra-large dishcloths (which were a gift intended for proofing dough and wrapping loaves). That seems to give a good balance between letting the loaf cool and excess moisture escape and not having it dry out too much. My cloths are soft french cotton but I know others recommend bakers' linen for this purpose.

sPh

My first hope is that my husband will be staying up a little later and if I leave the plastic bags, ties and room in the freezer he doesn't complain too much about doing the job. I just get my "pitiful pearl" face and it works:D. Otherwise I have to stay up, like it or not. Warm bread can't go in a plastic bag. Once I was so tired I forgot I had bread cooling (can you imagine) and I went to bed leaving the loaves out all night. They were still good after 6 hours but they were not lean breads. A baguette would have been dead.                                                                                                                                                                                            weavershouse

Not a silly question at all.

If it's a lean bread that's supposed to have a crisp crust, I'd probably just leave it out naked. Covering it, especially while warm, will make the crust soft. But I agree with weavershouse that this would kill a baguette; it would just be completely dried out by morning. OK for boules and batards, though. I never put lean breads in plastic; even when cool, I just leave them out with the cut side down on the counter, or maybe put them in a paper bag.

If it's a sandwich bread or otherwise supposed to have a soft crust, I'd do the dishtowel thing like sphealey recommended. Once cool, it can go in the plastic bag.

Susanfnp