6mo ago

What did your parents refrigerate? Mine refrigerated bread.

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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.
  
  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.
  
  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?
  
  My mom froze bread when I was growing up and it always made it soggy and crumbly. I don't know how all these people are so happy with it. When I got out on my own I found never frozen is much better. Just buy half loaves if you're worried it's going to go bad.
  
  I wonder if the type matters. I put all my loaves in the freezer from Sam’s and just take one out and put it in the bottom cupboard the night before if I’m low/out and it looks and tastes exactly the same as the never frozen loaf I will use first after I get home from shopping. I love my dedicated upright freezer. Not as efficient as a chest freezer but it’s convenient enough that my kids and I actually use it daily instead of trying to avoid it.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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?
  
  That's what I do. buy baguettes for the entire week at once, then freeze most of it, thawing what's needed every day.
  
  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.
- Refrigerated bread goes stale faster.
  
  But not moldy, which is dangerous as opposed to inconvenient.
  Can always throw the bread in the microwave for 10-15 seconds to give it some life anyways.
  
  I would rather have a sandwich with slightly sub par bread than wasting food and money because I have to keep throwing out 1/2 loaves because they molded before I ate them.
  
  Or just buy enough bread for one day. Good bread (without a shitload of additives) only last a single day anyway. Just get fresh bread each morning.
  
  So get up early, drive to the store, purchase a days worth of bread, drive home, drop it off, drive 45 minutes to an hour to work, work 8 hours, drive another 45-an hour home, and make sure to poll the family to see who wants bread for the next day because we'll be out again and I don't want to wake them up at 5:30 am to ask.
  What a completely rational solution that doesn't waste time or gas at all!!!
  OR -hear me out- be ok with less than perfect bread.
  Gonna have to think this one over.
  
  Get up at normal time, walk or cycle to nearest bakery (3 minutes), buy bread, cycle to work (5 minutes), have delicious bread for breakfast and lunch at work, cycle home.
  You have time to live 45 minutes away from work (WTF) but not 5 minutes to pick up bread?
  
  We're not all French, my boy, with baguette shops on every corner.
  
  hehe, suburbs.
  You don't have to move to Europe to live a 5 min walk from basically any store you would want to visit on a daily basis. But you probably do have to spend more than you can afford or move to a different town. North american cities are terribly designed and walkable neighbourhoods are sparse and in high demand.
  
  I dont mind living a little further from a retail area of the city. It'd be nice to have better public transit, though.
  I think its a bit silly to expect everyone to want to live in the exact same way though. Especially if it can feel cramped and claustrophobic to them.
  
  I think its a bit silly to expect everyone to want to live in the exact same way though. Especially if it can feel cramped and claustrophobic to them.
  Thank you. I currently live in a cramped housing development and I fucking hate it. I want live far enough from people that I can do loud shit without being self conscious about disturbing them and go outside without looking into 12 other back yards. I'd gladly drive more for that. The examples of walkable cities I've seen look like hell to me.
  
  The nearest bakery is almost a 30 minute walk. To live closer I'd need to triple my income to afford a home.
  Yes, I live far from the office (which is at a hospital) but I'm technically a work from home position because they give me a laptop and phone and I'm only required to come in every couple months. I work with hospice patients in their homes, so I have to drive to their houses with a trunk full of supplies that can't be reasonably packed into a single bag for other types of alternative travel. Plus, living in a Chicago suburb means going to work in sub zero to single digit weather, sometimes severe storms, and life stressing heat. A car and travel is mandatory for my job.
  It would be beautiful if I could access a bakery and be out in 5 minutes, but it's not an option. So I live the apparent tragedy of less than ideal sandwiches lol .
  
  You clearly don’t live in America
  
  I bake my own bread, no preservative, no additives, and simply putting it in a bag makes it last several days. Sure, if I leave it out on the counter, cut, it will harden around the exterior by the next day, but there are a number of very simple, and long tested, means of making it last longer.
  
  It goes stale faster, but molds slower. If it molds before you can use it, then staleness isn’t the issue.
  
  I don't eat it fast enough to not get mold.
  
  That hasn’t been true in my experience. If anything leaving it out on the counter makes it get stale (and worse, moldy) much faster, whereas i can leave a loaf in the fridge for a month or two and it will be perfectly fine.
  
  i can leave a loaf in the fridge for a month or two and it will be perfectly fine.
  I hate to break it to you, but that ain’t bread.
  
  Ehhh I mean yeah technically it’s “Scientifically Enhanced” Bread, but the “real” stuff is only good for a short time. I need something that doesn’t rush me to eat like 5-10 sandwiches (or meals where bread is a side) in one week.
  
  5-10 sandwiches a week is a lot of bread to you? When I was in high school as a growing teen-aged boy I would eat that in a day. Most families with kids will go through 1 or 2 loafs of bread each day.
  Is this a personal thing or do Americans in general just eat very little bread?
  
  American eat way too much bread … but I don’t get it either. I tend to follow a routine for breakfast and lunch: one sandwich a day for lunch will use up a loaf in about a week
  
  Don’t get me wrong, when I was a teen I’d go to the bakery, pick up a loaf of fresh french bread and eat it on the walk home. But those days are long since past, unfortunately. And I don’t have kids.
  
  It's worked fine for me so far.
- 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

664 comments