The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Stale Bread

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Stale Bread

I baked this 75% extration multigran SD bread on July 26th and left a slice on the counter wrapped in plastic since then.  Today it showed the first signs of mold.  That is 17 days no mold.  Yep, SD does make bread last longer.

MisterTT's picture
MisterTT

if you don't eat it all very quick. I had baked a quite large 100% rye with pumpkin seeds and kept it wrapped up in the fridge for about two to three weeks, just finished it yesterday with some fresh tomatoes from the garden. There was absolutely no loss of flavor, the aroma was not diminished either.

However, speaking about pure wheat SD loaves, I do find them to be not so great to eat at about day three. Don't get me wrong - they're still pretty good at that time, but usually I try to bake small enough batches to last a couple days.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and slice one quarter and freeze the other 3.   The first sliced quarter stays fresh for a week but it never lasts that long.  I actually had this bread at day10 for breakfast toast and lunch that day and it was fine.   Didn't mold till 17 days though. 

hanseata's picture
hanseata

Good test! And it's not only the sourdough, it's the whole grains that keep the breads longer fresh.

Same as DBM I cut my loaves in half and freeze one half. But I would never keep bread in the fridge, it molds and stales faster in this environment. A brown bag is fine for two days, after that I wrap the leftovers in plastic wrap and toast it before eating.

Karin

MisterTT's picture
MisterTT

into the fridge, wrapped in a couple of plastic bags - you'll be surprised how good it tastes even after weeks. I do agree that the fridge isn't the place for mostly wheat breads, but the ryes - especially wholemeal like pumpernickel or vollkornbrot - taste much better out from the fridge than from room temp.

It might have something to do with the fridges themselves. I've tried one with NoFrost and one without and the one without was definitely more suited for what was discussed.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and they had a a couple of rye breads from Germany, both 1005 rye, one a pumpernickel and one not,  Neither was refrigerated.  One had a 2 moth code date and the pumper was 4 months.  Neither needs refrigeration and the fridge will make them stale faster I'm guessing since the refrigeration sucks the moisture out of the bread,

MisterTT's picture
MisterTT

some moisture, but if you wrap it in two plastic bags and keep it as airtight as possible there's not really any place for the moisture to go. At least I don't find that the loaves are dry. Fridges without NoFrost or similar technology are even better.

Thing is, at the height of summer I made a sourdough whole rye and kept in the cupboard. It molded in four days! I was surprised, because there is no way that the pH of the bread was too high, because there was a high percentage of prefermented flour, namely 40%, and I did let the sour ferment until it was very sour. The bread tasted sour as well. Notwithstanding, the loaf did mold in four days. I figured there may be some mold in the cupboard so I threw away most of the admittedly quite old food out of there and disinfected the surfaces. Then I baked a borodinsky, which has 80 % whole rye and a scald which is supposed to help it keep even longer. It molded in 5 days.

That's when I started keeping high ryes in the fridge and they do keep fine. Didn't come up with the idea myself, have read a couple of times here in TFL of keeping pumpernickels refrigerated. I believe the issues most people have with keeping bread in the fridge is that they don't like the taste of it when it's cold (nothing to do about that), they don't wrap it well enough or they've never tried it. It's like keeping lean wheat bread in plastic bags - most say to never do it, but there are people for whom this works well enough - Ken Forkish among them.

hanseata's picture
hanseata

By all means, when you made good experiences with it.

We usually eat bread so fast, that it doesn't last very long, and freeze what we can't eat within three days.

If I sometimes forget a leftover bread in a brown bag, it usually either just out or molds on the cut surface that sits on the counter. Therefore I think it is a trapped moisture issue.

Karin