I live in a humid climate (especially in the summer), and if we don’t refrigerate our bread and tortillas, or any baked goods, they get moldy in like 4 days.
Have you tried freezing it?
Refrigerating baked goods accelerates staleness, but most baked goods freeze well.
Frozen bread or bust. No one’s wants that cardboard you kept in the fridge.
I’ve had bread in the freezer for months, I throw it straight in the toaster and it comes out like, well… normal ass toast.
Only exception for me is tortillas. I mean they technically freeze well, but they will also stick together which would make quite a thick burrito.
My parents always freeze them and I always forget until I’m there trying to make a burrito and it tears in half.
yup. tortillas go in the fridge so you can get individual ones easily. Staleness never really bothered me, but i do warm them up on the stove to improve malleability. And i like to get my burritos a little crispy on the outside to help seal the final fold. Now i want burritos…
I freeze tortillas, one trick to using them after they thaw is rolling the whole package a couple of times both ways.
Still have to be careful separating them, but it’s no worse than a package of tortilla that has sat underneath too much weight for too long.
This trick also works with tortillas that sat underneath too much weight for too long
Chuck them in the microwave or better yet put baking paper (which if i recall correctly you usians call wax paper or parchment paper) in between each tortilla before you freeze it to keep them seperate
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Yes, we freeze some as well
people are downvoting a scientifically verifiable statment.
owning the bread chillers
Same. I don’t get why people act like putting bread in the fridge is world ending. Unless your eating a whole loaf of bread in 2 days in the fridge it goes.
That or you get a loaf of mold on the 4th day.
Probably because it sucks to eat cold bread
You can take two slices out for like five minutes and you’ll be good my guy.
Or lightly toast it? You don’t have to get it crispy to warm it up. It’s better than moldy bread
Also pan toasted toast with butter is way better than the toaster
I just butter and toast on low heat and flip once the other side starts to feel warm
That’s so good and I do this too. I don’t actually even own a regular toaster anymore. I do have an old toaster oven. The timer on it hasn’t worked in years but I have other kitchen timers and it still cooks like a champ. It even has a convection mode.
I refrigerate my bread, english muffins, and tortillas too!
I had air conditioning growing up and my family tends to make desserts more in the winter.
The first summer living on my own, I made a beautiful blueberry pie, and the next morning I took it out of the microwave (to keep bugs away during the night- I have since learned this was also an idiosyncrasy from my parents. Most people just cover it) and it was already visibly moldy.
I’m glad I got a slice the first day, and I definitely learned a lesson but holy shit was it a surprise.
I had 65% last weekend and since then constantly a bit above 50% in Switzerland. Usually around 30% unless it’s summer. How much is “humid” for you?
Humidity where I live right now is 81%. And we’re having a “dry spell”.
Woah.
Today it’s 75%
52%, rainy-sunny mix. This season is incredibly wet.
Same. In the winter here, bread can last two weeks, but in the summer it’ll mold in a day or two.
That’s legit. Not really in Canada though.
Well, yes…but 4 day old bread from the fridge is basically inedible as well because of the bad taste.
I’ve never had my bread get stale from being in the fridge for 4 days. You have to leave it in a bag or airtight container.
It just goes into the toaster. Works better than frozen bread with crystals.
Then you probably only ever had bad bread to begin with.
Edit: I suspect all the down-votes are from the US/UK who sadly never tasted good bread fresh from the oven it seems.
I bake frequently, sometimes bread, sometimes bagels, sometimes sweets. If I leave any homemade goods out on the counter in the summer, they would get moldy even quicker than store-bought.
why are you comparing 4-day-old bread to bread fresh from the oven? wow yeah it really doesn’t compare, what genius observation. what kind of storage makes it as good as fresh bread from the oven, pray tell?
Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
Stale bread, no thanks. Even no bread at all is better than that.
But freezing it and reheating it afterwards also works OK for some types of bread.
Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
But don’t you get it? Here in the US, we can’t do that because we’ve got to drive an hour to the grocery store once a week (or less)! Uphill, both ways, fording rivers and traversing icy mountain passes! Waaah!
Obligatory NotJustBikes on how there is a better way
Downvoters are brain dead. Science aligns with the taste buds on this one. Freeze your bread, you degenerates! Doesn’t take terribly long to thaw, doesn’t become dry and stale af like fridge bread.
Hi, it’s you from the future, older and wiser, take your fucking bread out of the fridge!
Keep it in the bag and then warm it up in a toaster oven. Imagine eating sad room temperature bagels…
Refrigerating bread slows down mold growth…
This increasing the shelf life.
You don’t have to refrigerate bread. But you can with clear reason.
Mine refuse to refrigerate cheese (other than cream-cheese) and butter. Infuriates me as it gets super oily and rancid real fast.
One of my wife’s friends got persistently sick last year. She just could not get better. Sometimes she’d be fine for a week or two, but then she’d get sick again. Eventually it came down to her needing to document everything she did each day - and they discovered she was getting sick from warm butter.
Turns out her mom had come over at some point and saw that she refrigerated butter and said “you don’t need to do that, it’s so much easier to use when warm and it doesn’t go bad.” Yeah, that’s the case if you eat a stick of butter in a few short days. But you can’t leave it out for more than that or it starts getting filled with all sorts of germs.
Was it unsalted butter? Salted butter can be left out for a while, certainly more than a few days without concern, but unsalted needs to be refrigerated.
Not sure. Sounds like unsalted based on what you said.
i eat salted butter that stay days outside the freezer without getting sick, never tested with unsalted, or my immune system is better idk
For the last few years, I’ve been using butter I leave out in a covered butter dish on the counter since I learned that’s fine. It’s always been a stick of salted butter which I typically finish within 2-3 weeks and that’s never caused any problems. I wonder if it being unsalted would really change things that much…
did she just leave it out uncovered? one of those ceramic dish things with a cover seems to keep it out fine.
Not sure. But those dishes definitely aren’t airtight.
I’ve been made fun of for thinking butter tastes/feels off after sitting out on the counter, but it absolutely does. If you want soft butter, take it out like an hour before or soften it with heat and whip it back into a homogeneous mixture. I usually cut a pad and melt it on top of whatever I’m making before spreading it. Anything but leaving it on the counter to go bad…
Cheese is a weird one though. Definitely refrigerate cheese.
They claim cheese needs to “breathe” and apparently that is indeed a thing for some French cheese, but not have it sit unrefrigerated for a few days 😒
Depending on the cheese, breathing just means being exposed to oxygen, you can do that INSIDE the refrigerator if it is clean
My SO is a counter butter er. I’ve told her it’s grow but she won’t listen. She gets her own butter now.
Someone tried to convince me to get a heated butter knife. I think I’m seeing their point on it
Can also just heat a regular butter knife over the stove or more ideally in hot water
My SO does leave butter in a butter dish but only a small amount.
We got a butter bell, which is the best of both worlds. Room temperature butter kept airtight. Lasts 10-14 days, I’d estimate.
I always thought it was OK to leave salted butter out. Been doing it for years never had a problem I can remember. I also don’t eat tons of butter so would guess I’ve left it out longer than two weeks
I’ve never heard that, but if it works, it works!
This is the first I’ve heard of a butter bell. I’ve been leaving salted butter out for years, but I bought a glass food storage container with a snap on lid that is basically the exact size of a stick of butter. I suppose it’s accomplishing almost the same thing, although a tiny amount of air does get inside especially as the stick is eaten.
Yeah, butter changes color too. Something happens if it turns soft.
I do this with Colby cheese. mmmm, greasy cheese
If I don’t put my bread in the fridge, it’s moldy within a week. It’s all meant to be toasted anyway.
Clean your cupboards. Mold spores can remain on surfaces for months. Give everything a good wipe-down with some cleaning spray or vinegar solution and then leave the cabinets open to dry out well. And do it again anytime food gets moldy.
Packaged bread should last more than a week, but fresh bread is meant to be eaten within a few days, if not the same day.
I used to live in a desert and bread easily lasted for weeks. Once I moved to what is essentially a rain forest, it doesn’t last more than 5 days. I have to refrigerate it.
Yes, you’re right about the humidity being the biggest factor, and that will also make bread go stale. It also depends on whether it’s prepackaged bread or freshly baked. Prepackaged bread is less likely to arrive with mold spores, and the packaging keeps humidity out during transit and storage. Once it is opened to the humidity, especially in tropical climates, refrigeration will slow any growth.
For people in arid climates, their refrigerator might actually be more humid than their cupboards.
Humidity is an interesting metric. It’s a percentage of the airs total capacity to absorb moisture.
It’s not a measure of percentage of water(vapour?) in the air.
Air can have 100% humidity. It can’t have 100% water
Greatly depends on your country. Dutch bread is very fresh when bought with little to no preservatives. So we freeze our bread, like 90%of us, cuz it will mold in the fridge after like 4 or 5 days if not sooner.
I’m guessing you don’t live somewhere with high heat & humidity, or if you do you run your AC a lot. We keep bread on the counter and in the fridge but not all bread is equally resistant to mold, even some packaged bread. In the winter it’s a lot more forgiving. Also we just open the windows and run fans quite a bit in the summer.
Naw, I’m too lazy for that.
I’ve gotten some bread with no preservatives and it went in a couple days
If i bake bread i will eat it within 2 days
Mine didn’t refrigerate bread when I was growing up, but I do now. There are less people in the house so the bread stays around longer.
My suggestion would be to freeze half a loaf and pull it out when needed. Bread thaws quite well and it doesn’t get stale that way.
I didn’t learn this til recently. My bread use to spoil after a week. Now I just keep it in the freezer and toast it when I want to use it. Comes out perfect every time.
Exactly what I do. I can actually buy a bunch of bread now because most of it stays frozen and there’s only half a loaf on the counter at a time. It’s kind of miraculous how well it dethaws.
This is going to sound like a real stupid question.
When you unfreeze it, does it get sad looking and taste funny?
Or am I doing something wrong?
You’re not going to enjoy dethawed bread if it formed crystals in the freezer. The only option is to toast it.
Straight into the toaster from the freezer. If you want bread, set the toaster light. If you want toast, set it dark.
Some toasters even have a switch for frozen bread to compensate.
Here in rural Canada we have always frozen bread even short term. Mostly because mice can’t get into the freezer.
You might be doing something wrong. Definitely should be in a airtight ziploc bag. It will get sort of freezer burned if not. Toasting it instead of thawing helps.
I keep it in the bag on the counter and it thaws just fine
Not mine.
That’s what i’ve always seen as well. I don’t know what people do to make it work
It was my mom that did this, and always got store brand white bread. For the people saying it works, are you on the Wonder Bread side, or something with more substance?
I haven’t had a problem with the last pieces being stale. Either that or I’m just not very picky about how stale bread is.
You’re not very picky.
Refrigerating bread makes the yeast crystals break down and go stale faster. Heat can fix this, but only once or twice. This is why toasting stale bread brings it back a bit.
Freezing bread is the correct way, as it stops the yeast crystals in their tracks, rather than breaking them down. Reheating frozen bread gives you almosy fresh bread.
Think about how bread is stored before you buy it. Unless it’s only partially cooked, it’s not refrigerated.
You’re not very picky.
I will agree with that statement. As long as I’m not eating anything dangerous (I am picky about that!), I prefer it that way.
Slice it first and you can then fetch a slice from the freezer and pop it into the toaster, easy peasy hot bread in the morning.
It’s weird how common this claim is. Growing up, my Mom always frozen bread to keep it longer, but it always tasted bad and was the wrong texture
Homemade isn’t.
Are you a medieval peasant? Most folks in the US buy our bread premade, some are even lucky bastards and live by a bakery.
Even medieval peasants bought their bread from bakeries most of the time.
No I’m trying to save money, because bread here is 5 dollars a loaf. Homemade is way cheaper and it’s very easy.
As a german this is heresy.
What Americans call “bread” doesn’t qualify as bread to Germans anyway. Kinda like beer.
I’ve had good beer and crappy beer in Germany: the same as the USA.
Turns out the idea that “small breweries generally make good beer, and industrial breweries make garbage” tends to be true worldwide.
We make plenty of good bread and some of the best beer in the world. We just also make some of the worst of both. Big country, tons of room in the market. (We also have excellent wine, chocolate, cheese, whatever you want. It’s just not necessarily at your local supermarket.)
What Americans call Democracy also doesn’t qualify
“sparkling voting”?
Oof, I wish you weren’t right.
I didn’t used to refrigerate bread but living in Seattle bread here can mold in like 2 days. It all lives in the fridge now to give it a fighting chance
I basically just go by whether or not it was refrigerated in the supermarket. However, once it’s opened I mostly throw everything in there except for dry stuff.
Good general rule. Only exception I can think of is there are a few fruits they’ll refrigerate in the back and then often display at room temp, since a few hours at room temp doesn’t hurt them much. Apples, oranges, stuff like that.
You don’t need to refrigerate apples and oranges? Just leave them in the counter for easy snacking.
lol what supermarket is moving apples and oranges in and out of the refrigerator every day for display purposes?
It’s pretty common actually. There is a large walk-in cooler in the back where perishable backstock is stored. When new apples are needed, a big box is fetched from the cooler and the apples are restocked in the display.
Most of the stuff is kept in the back cooler, only things left out are those harmed by refrigeration like tomatoes or those that don’t go bad for a long time.
With apples it extends their life by quite a long time though. Probably over double.
products with any sort of packaging also say how they should be stores pre and post-opening, e.g. canned goods are generally fine to keep in a cupboard until opened where they then need to be in the fridge.
There are a lot of things sold unrefrigersted that need to refrigerated after opening. Like every jar of spaghetti sauce I’ve ever bought.
Living in the tropics, it’s rather common to refrigerate bread, else you run the risk of mould overnight.
I’ve lived on my own for a while and I freeze everything I can. Nothing lasts long enough unless it’s frozen or shelf safe.
This does mean I get a lot of my fruits in smoothie form.
I’m lucky most vegan things last longer than the non-vegan things I grew up with.
I’m vegan too, and God bless how long our food lasts.
I just now for the first realize that my food waste has gone to almost 0 since i’m vegan.
Same. Maybe the odd head of lettuce.
I’m so confused right now. We aren’t completely vegan but we mostly cook vegan at home. But like, that’s the majority of the stuff that goes bad? All the fresh vegetables and fruit? Vegan spreads, milks and yogurts go bad just as fast as dairy ones. I have the feeling oat milk goes bad faster than homogenized cow milk. Eggs never go bad. I hardly remember ever tossing a piece of meat or fish, but hell whenever I have to buy a 2 kg sack of carrots because it is just so much cheaper than 700g of carrots and 1/2 of it goes bad (and it’s still cheaper) or I buy a perfect bell pepper just to open it to find mold or that brown stuff in avocado or I buy organic lemons and they are 2/3 moldy the next day I can’t even… I have a special storage thing for potatoes and they still go bad occasionally. Yesterday garlic from the store was half rotten. Or when you didn’t notice a tomato got a hit in your bag and that injury proceeds to mold… Or when your kid tossed the apples on the floor and they all develop bruises faster than you can eat them all and they just aren’t that tasty anymore… We are trying our best to go to the store for fresh stuff daily but I feel like it is still a fight against nature.
So for real, what are you guys talking about? Absolutely no offense, I am genuinely curious why our experiences differ so vastly.
I dunno why exactly. It’s just my experience.
Maybe it’s because plant cells have cell walls, making them more rugged?
My veggies have always lasted the same amount of time, but things like tofu and milk last forever.
Plant milk last sooo long compared to cows milk.
“Plant milk” is not milk, it’s a vegetable beverage.
Fuck, here I was, jerking off to the thought of almond titties all this time
You say that like it’s something I care about. Only carnis get caught up about this.
It’s white shit I pour on my cereal and drink with my pb sandwiches.
Fucking weirdos sucking on cow tits get upset when someone compares an alternative to their cow tit juice.
Cows milk is for baby cows, grow up and stop stealing from babies.
You can dry-age beef for up to 4 months. Some people go even longer. Of course, you could also can it like fruits and vegetables, but I’ve never been a fan.
Then there’s mastodon meat dug out of the tundra that dogs would still eat…
Maybe, but the smoothies are disgusting.
Mmm, mastodon smoothie.
Yes, how to dry age meat would be very useful to a vegan.
Fruits from warm climates on the other hand, take cold damage and go bad sooner in 4°C.
Bread absolutely lasts longer when refrigerated
I have an slightly odd one that I do myself: Carrots in a water filled container (in the fridge). That way they last really long and you don’t get that limpy half-dried version after a while that is hard to remove the peel off. They basically stay as if fresh from the store or garden.
I don’t know why but I feel like anything in water would spoil faster…but I have no evidence or even a theory as to why this might be. Perhaps you, keeper of the water carrots, could enlighten me as to why they keep longer?
I think the water itself just keeps them from drying out and the fridge is what keeps them from spoiling (water or not). But usually the carrots become too dried out long before they spoil in a fridge. But maybe the typical mold that would grow on carrots also doesn’t like being submerged.
They are roots. Roots are like spongy straws. When a sponge dries out…
Works even better for celery.
My mom recently taught my wife something similar. Now we keep them in a plastic container with paper towels between each carrot. The paper towels are moist, but I’m not sure if she wet them or if they collected it from the carrots. But the carrots are really fresh even after a couple of weeks in the fridge.
I assumed it would be enough if the container was just 1/4-1/3 full, when I have space I also do that, I’ll try a full on water container next time. Btw that’s also a great way if you have chopped carrot sticks, they stay fresh for the next day(s). I think this works with all root vegetables since, well, it’s roots that are meant to take in water and transport it
I don’t know whether this works in a horizontal position actually, I always assumed smth smth gravity, but on the other hand, when you fully immerse them then gravity can probably go out the window.
Yes, horizontal works. My family always stored in water vertically, but my in-laws did that horizontally. Aside from joke wars, it was the same
I have never had that issue with my carrots and they last for months in the fridge.
Mine start to wilt within three days for some reason (in the fridge). I wonder what I am doing wrong. I always see those bags of carrots in the grocery stores and never buy them because I think to myself no one eats that many carrots within such a short amount of time, except maybe if they are doing a carrot cake or smoothie or something else very carrot-centric.
Carrots? Do you just leave them open air in the middle of the fridge or something? I keep them in the bag in the veggie drawer.
I’ve actually got to make sure they don’t get mushy/moldy because all the moisture gets trapped.
That must be it. I don’t bag them.
Most modern fridges have a humidity control on the crisper/veggie drawer. That most likely accounts for the disparity. There also regional humidity to consider. Living in a dryer climate, your carrots may dry out faster than those in a humid climate.
You don’t need water… keeping them horizontal (as they would grow) in a container of sand also keeps them fresh longer
Ya but then my carrots have sand on them
Adds to the crunch.
CarrotS grow vertical.
FYI, carrots grow vertically, not horizontally.
Try living with a French room mate and find out what doesn’t go in the fridge. Hint: everything.
My mother, for years, has frozen bread and then defrosted it two pieces at a time in the microwave.
If you’ve ever seen the Albert Brooks movie Mother, that’s her. She even said it was her when she saw it. She’s even started writing novels in her old age after wanting to be a writer when she was a kid.
Americans: Eggs
Europeans: WTF?This is because of a difference in food safety standards. When eggs are laid, they’re covered in something called bloom. It’s a slimy coating which the chicken produces. It’s full of good bacteria, and it protects the eggs and prevents them from spoiling. So Europeans buy eggs with the bloom on them, and don’t need to refrigerate their eggs.
But in America, the Food and Drug Administration has strict regulations regarding animal poop near food. Namely, you can’t have animal poop near your food. Full stop, with very few exceptions. And since chickens poop out of the same hole they lay eggs from, part of the bloom is, in fact, chicken poop. So eggs in America have to be washed, to remove that chicken poop before they can be sold. But this also removes the bloom, meaning the eggs are unprotected and need to be refrigerated.
Bloom it up! Local farm stands have a good bet of being unwashed eggs. Can’t say I blame the FDA on this, given the awful state of dairy and chicken farms that we get these eggs from…
From Europe, never had a slimy coating on my eggs.
It’s dry by the time it reaches you, but is still protecting the eggs by filling in all the pores in the eggshell. Basically, eggs in america have porous shells, which means they spoil faster in the open air.
it’s perfectly standard to keep eggs in the fridge here in sweden, no reason not to since it just makes them last forever.
They last 3-4 weeks anyway (with that bloom thing).
Longer! In Scotland, mostly cool, mine sit on the counter for a couple of months at a time.
I spin them to check if they’re still okay. You spin them on the counter, briefly place a finger to stop them and release. If the yolk is still fluid the egg will start to spin again, and they’re good to use. If the inners have congealed they stop dead, and go in the bin.
Put an egg in a glass of water. If it floats, discard.
You can keep unwashed eggs in the fridge for months.
Wastes space imo
yeah i can see that, if you need the space more and eat eggs a lot anyways then it definitely makes sense to keep them outside the fridge.
But for me who eats an egg every now and then and buys 6 or maybe 10-12 packs, i don’t even consider keeping them outside the fridge.
I don’t eat eggs but my spouse does store them on the counter. Fresh farm eggs don’t need refrigerators.
I was told that they last the longest if kept out of the fridge the first week or so and afterwards you should put them in a fridge. And for some reason if they are already refrigerated they need to stay refrigerated no matter how old. No idea if there is a scientific basis to it, but it sounds at least plausible that there is.
I am American but I buy my eggs from a local farm, where they do not do more than a light wash with water. No fridge for those.
Batteries.
I read that in the 90s and having burned through thousands of batteries to power my Gameboy, i would have done anything to get more juice.
You could have literally told me that kissing the battery before you tuck it into the Gameboy slot gave 3% more juice and I would have did it.
This reminded me of another one that probably nobody does anymore: photographic film rolls.
I refrigerate bread. It’s much better and more effective than a bread box. My parents did not refrigerate bread because they live in a different part of the country where it would not mold over as quickly.
