High School Bread Mold Experiment
This morning my 15 year old comes to me and says, "Dad I have a bread mold experiment I have to do for Biology". Instantly, I gloss over the "mold" and start thinking he needs some starter to take to school but, I digress. Anyway, they have to wet a piece of bread leave it on the the counter for a few hours then toss it in a baggie and put it in a dark place. So, I gave my son two pieces of bread one a dinner roll I made and two a piece of sourdough I made. It will be interesting to see which of the two molds the fastest. I also told him to inform his teacher that the breads he used were homemade and only contained Flour, Water, Yeast and Salt compared to the Commercial Chemical Bread that I'm sure all the other students are using, so that she can compare the results between real bread and the chemical bread. When I can get some data from his class I will share it, this should be fun and interesting.
would be very disappointed if she had my bread to examine, or at least she would have to wait for a very long time :-)
I had the same project in bio... no one in my group had homemade bread but some of the enriched breads grew some crazy stuff where our dirty hands had touched
please let us know how homemade bread does in comparison
Might be better data to just do it at home, but this still should be interesting.
Another curious one waithing to see how this turns out. Too bad one of yours wasn't a 100% rye.
Janet
I buy 'dead bread' to feed the crows. I've had some commercial loaves last for over 3 weeks without mold. It says a lot about what's in the stuff when even fungi don't want to eat it. Sometimes I worry about the crows' nutrition!
Patsy
You must have enough moisture present. You must have mildew spores, and you must have warm enough temperatures. The number of mold spots you get are representative of the number of mold spores in the air. The color of the spots indicates the varieties of mold.
The fact that the bread is sterile when it leaves the bakery and stays that way in the packaging is good news.
Never touched by human hands!