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.
Likewise. I enjoy my bread lasting more than four days.
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.
My SO got a chuckle out of me because I instinctively put chocolate in the fridge. I grew up in a hot climate but I live in Canada now.
That's legit though.
Even when in canada, because cold chocolate below 20°C is cronchier and doesnt melt in your hand as fast.
I put dark chocolate in the freezer, not for preservation or anything I just love the texture.
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.
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.
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.
Bread outside the fridge spoils fast. Bread in the fridge lasts longer but is less fluffy. In this household we refrigerate our bread and then toast it lightly if we're going to eat it straight. Most of the sandwiches I make are toasted anyway.
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.
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.
Putting boiling water in the freezer is so useful, like you can cook it once and freeze it, then get it out when you need it and just reheat it a little.
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.
"Only white people put ketchup in the fridge." - my Mexican roommate
non refrigerated ketchup always tastes funky unless it's the kind that's packed with a large enough buttload of preservatives that they no longer have to put "refrigerate after opening" on the bottle.
Personally, I refrigerate anything that says Refrigerate after opening. Even if it's preceded by For best results. Ketchup falls into that category.
Ketchup belongs in the fridge, to cut the heat. Otherwise it's too spicy.
Americans: Eggs
Europeans: WTF?
That's because in America we're so concerned about contaminants on shells that we clean all the protection off the outside, making the shells porous enough for bacteria to get through. Store-bought eggs in the US so have to be refrigerated.
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.
it's perfectly standard to keep eggs in the fridge here in sweden, no reason not to since it just makes them last forever.
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.
Freeze bread to keep it from going bad and thaw it as needed either at room temp or low heat in a toaster oven. Bread in the fridge just dries out.
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.
I put hot sauce in the fridge. I know I don't need to, but it just feels right.
My parents didn't just refrigerate bread. They stuck excess bread in the fucking freezer.
Edit: guess I've been sleeping on the freezer bread thing. Y'all seem pretty sold on the concept.
I used to live in the tropics.
This is standard. Half the bread goes in the freezer immediately.
When you finish the first half, move the frozen bread into the fridge.
Refrigerated bread is good once you get used to it.
Not parents but I have a half gallon of milk that expired in 2015. It came with me when I moved from an apartment to my house in 2018.
Never been opened.. yet.
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