April 24, 2011 - 5:56pm
Mold on my pitas
I've been making fresh bread for my family a few times a week for about a year now. For sandwich bread, I leave one loaf out, and put two in the freezer. Leftover pizza just gets put in the fridge. I haven't had a problem.
Last night I tried my hand at some whole wheat pita bread, baked on a stone in the oven. Came out fantastic. I allowed them to cool for a few hours, then wrapped them up and put them in the freezer. When I took a few out today, they were covered in mold! They had molded in the freezer overnight! How does that even happen, and how can I prevent it from happening in the future?
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What does this mold look like? Maybe it's just something that looks like mold - freezer burn? Could you post a photo?
I've already tossed it, but it was definitely not freezer burn. Dark green spots across the surface.
It sounds like you accidentally splashed some pesto on them, or else your freezer is broken.
I agree with the above posters, I highly doubt it was mold. Even if your freezer was broken a few hours of storage would not have had those results. Maybe the wrap had been used previously or something else contaminated the pitas. Yuck, you certainly don't want that to happen again. Put on your thinking cap! Any other ideas?
Nope. Nothing was spilled on them, and I used a fresh wrapper. I've been doing some research and found that for whatever reason pitas go bad faster than other breads, but that fast?
I guess I'll have to pull them out of the trash to photograph, although I REALLY don't want to.
Could it be that a big part of the problem is more the freezer than the bread? Things to check:
Just one of these by itself couldn't have caused the problem. But it might have made the problem enough worse that you noticed it.
"The pitas weren't spread out until they froze solid"
Wait. We stacked them right out of the oven. The freezer itself is fine, the door stays shut most of the time, defrost works fine, freezer is cold. Maybe this is the issue?
If they were pretty warm when frozen, and hadn't dried. I find even in our dry climate that I must cool bread of all kinds on a wire rack with a towel over top. They will become damp if bagged and put in fridge, and will have ice crystals if frozen. I make pitas about monthly and haven't seen your specific problem.
Technically, if the mould was green and black, it was undoubtedly Rhizopus nigricans, or common bread mould. (One of my daughters is a biologist, here for Easter and just spelled it all out for me.) She says you can confirm by putting a bit of the mould on another piece of unmoulded bread and see if it grows, but I'm thinking all of us might take a pass on that!
If they were stacked right out of the oven, then allowed to cool, maybe the top and bottom ones were indeed cool but the middle ones were still quite warm ???
This may seem like out of left field, yet this is the time of year for high pollen counts.
Jim
Well, they were all cool when I put them away, but I didn't check for dampness. And they weren't black and green, but a dark green.
They will start out green and if the mould progresses, it darkens towards black, if it was mould.