Only if you like stale bread. It goes stale much faster in the fridge than at room temperature.
OT: Bread Bins....Opinions
Mar 01, 2009
34 Replies
Perhaps you need to switch your fridge on?
It's true. I'll find the section in McGee's definitive "On food and cooking..." tonight but this is similar:
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"..... A good rule of thumb is that a 10-degree-Celsius drop in temperature will about halve the rate of a typical biological reaction like "going bad." That being said, bread is special. The thing is that when bread goes stale, it doesn't so much go stale via chemical reactions as many foods do, but rather via something physical that happens to starch. Starch tends to crystallize at cool temperatures, and this process, sometimes called "retrogradation," happens about six times faster at refrigerator temperatures than at room temperature. Loss of water also speeds up this process, so you want to keep bread in a container that stops moisture from escaping."
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... and when it has retrograded (or is that retrograd(u)ated?) to a sufficient extent, you use it to make breadcrumbs - for stuffing, Christmas pudding, etc.
(Never heard that term before, had no idea of the temperature effect on starch. But bread does change texture considerably way before it goes mouldy most of the time.)
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"..... A good rule of thumb is that a 10-degree-Celsius drop in
I must have some strange enzymes here, then. I keep ordinary shop bought sliced bread for toast - and if kept in the fridge is usable for far longer than in a bread bin.
Decent bread will be eaten long before any problem. ;-)
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>> "..... A good rule of thumb is that a 10-degree-Celsius drop in
OK I have McGee in front of me
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- highly recommended).
There are several pages on the process of staling, (the migration of water molecules within the amylose and amylopectin granules) and an explanation of why heating/toasting stale bread partially re-gelatinises the starch but increases the stale odour. The section concludes:
"A last important point about staling: it is a temperature dependent process. It proceeds most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing, and very slowly below freezing. In one experinemt, bread stored at 46F (7C), a fairly typical refrigerator temperature, staled as much in one day as bread held at 86F (30C) did in 6 days. The lesson is obvious: if you are going to freeze bread, freeze it as quickly as possible so as to minimise the time it spends close to 32F. If you are not going to freeze bread, store it tightly wrapped at room temperature".
Have you ever tried this yourself with ordinary shop bought sliced bread?
6 days in a bread bin and it'll be mouldy.
A few observations:
1 I'm amazed at how many people didn't know that bread went stale more quickly in the fridge2 Ordinary shop-bought sliced bread isn't really bread, it's some sort of steamed pudding AFAICS
3 There are several things that go wrong with bread - hardness, flavour, and mould - and it's important to distinguish them
But it doesn't here...
Which is why I was careful to point out that's what I was talking about. And of course is the only bread to 99% of the population. Who don't wear sandals and hug trees.
Ordinary white sliced bread made into toast is only a carrier for things spread on it - so only the mould thingie really applies.
Nor here.
I've got rather a small fridge - built in so difficult to change for a larger one - and being able to keep bread in something else satisfactorily would be useful. But I've not found anything that works as well.
I think that should be "as we are to insects". We are both members of kingdom Animalia. They are both members of kingdom Fungi.
Well fish are also animalia so whats the difference?
I'm too many years out of date to put up a good argument for that - but I'd point out that single-celled, asexual division yeast is a pretty long way from multi-cellular spore bearing fungi.
A lot of the old group names had a certain amount of human arrogance in them. Small and unimportant looking? Must be related. And of course there's *no way* we could put the man of the forest in the same genus as ourselves...
Andy
About £2.50 at the local chippie ?
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