6mo ago

What did your parents refrigerate? Mine refrigerated bread.

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664 comments

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.
  
  Good to know, I recently started getting bread from a local bakery but it doesn't last, I'll have to try freezing it next time
  
  Make sure you cut it first if it’s not sliced, it’s a lot easier to deal with before you freeze it
  
  Oh my god, yes. Otherwise you have a blunt force trauma weapon
  
  Like a poor man's dwarf bread. If only we knew the real recipe.
  
  Freeze it every time.
  If you're anything less than a family of four, leaving bread at room temperature is just eating half a loaf of bread and then throwing away half a loaf of mouldy bread.
  Most supermarket bread has indeed already been frozen before you get it.
  I even freeze all the cakes from Costco, since they only seem to come in packs of about a thousand.
  
  In my area it's common to buy bread daily
  
  Only exception for me is tortillas. I mean they technically freeze well, but they will also stick together which would make quite a thick burrito.
  My parents always freeze them and I always forget until I'm there trying to make a burrito and it tears in half.
  
  yup. tortillas go in the fridge so you can get individual ones easily. Staleness never really bothered me, but i do warm them up on the stove to improve malleability. And i like to get my burritos a little crispy on the outside to help seal the final fold. Now i want burritos...
  
  I freeze tortillas, one trick to using them after they thaw is rolling the whole package a couple of times both ways.
  Still have to be careful separating them, but it's no worse than a package of tortilla that has sat underneath too much weight for too long.
  This trick also works with tortillas that sat underneath too much weight for too long
  
  Chuck them in the microwave or better yet put baking paper (which if i recall correctly you usians call wax paper or parchment paper) in between each tortilla before you freeze it to keep them seperate
  
  This is the way. It's all I do.
  If I'm going to use the bread in the next couple days? I'll keep it out. Otherwise, I put all my baked goods/bread in the freezer, and extra freezer I bought. Keeps for months. 6+ months if you're lucky and willing to deal with it being overly dry.
  
  Yes, we freeze some as well
  
  people are downvoting a scientifically verifiable statment.
  owning the bread chillers
- 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.
  
  Probably because it sucks to eat cold bread
  
  You can take two slices out for like five minutes and you’ll be good my guy.
  
  Or lightly toast it? You don't have to get it crispy to warm it up. It's better than moldy bread
  
  Also pan toasted toast with butter is way better than the toaster
  I just butter and toast on low heat and flip once the other side starts to feel warm
  
  That's so good and I do this too. I don't actually even own a regular toaster anymore. I do have an old toaster oven. The timer on it hasn't worked in years but I have other kitchen timers and it still cooks like a champ. It even has a convection mode.
  
  Toasting! Doesn't even have to be browned, doesn't even have to go long enough to get firm, but a little warming up makes bread even better! :D
- I had air conditioning growing up and my family tends to make desserts more in the winter.
  The first summer living on my own, I made a beautiful blueberry pie, and the next morning I took it out of the microwave (to keep bugs away during the night- I have since learned this was also an idiosyncrasy from my parents. Most people just cover it) and it was already visibly moldy.
  I’m glad I got a slice the first day, and I definitely learned a lesson but holy shit was it a surprise.
- I too grew up in a humid environment and got used to using either a bread box or the fridge.
  Then I realized that our bread was just cheap sugar infused garbage, and that if you pay a bit more for better bread, it does not mold anywhere nearly as quickly.
- That's legit. Not really in Canada though.
- Same. In the winter here, bread can last two weeks, but in the summer it'll mold in a day or two.
- I had 65% last weekend and since then constantly a bit above 50% in Switzerland. Usually around 30% unless it's summer. How much is "humid" for you?
  
  We get 90% every day here in Florida
  
  Sounds like mold.
  
  There were mushrooms the size of dinner plates in my back yard the other day. I was mortified.
  
  Humidity where I live right now is 81%. And we're having a "dry spell".
  
  Woah.
  
  Today it's 75%
  
  52%, rainy-sunny mix. This season is incredibly wet.
- Well, yes...but 4 day old bread from the fridge is basically inedible as well because of the bad taste.
  
  I've never had my bread get stale from being in the fridge for 4 days. You have to leave it in a bag or airtight container.
  
  Then you probably only ever had bad bread to begin with.
  Edit: I suspect all the down-votes are from the US/UK who sadly never tasted good bread fresh from the oven it seems.
  
  Good (fresh) bread only lasts a day or two around my house, because it's amazing and delicious and everyone just eats it.
  Average commercial everyday bread is going to sit around longer because it's waiting on someone to feel like making a sandwich, or feel like having toast. It's basically a pantry staple hanging out, waiting to get used. The fridge is fine for that.
  EDIT I see your edit - I think culture/lifestyle is also playing a fair part here as well. I've spent most of my life living in a rural area where nothing is walkable, so trips to the grocery store were once a week. If I lived in a place I could just walk down the street to a bakery and grab a fresh loaf, that would be different. But just because I don't live in a walkable place doesn't mean I've never had good bread.
  
  Science backs you up.
  Regular white bread without additives lasts about 24h before going stale. Wonderbread goes longer. Refrigerating any bread ruins it in short order.
  
  I bake frequently, sometimes bread, sometimes bagels, sometimes sweets. If I leave any homemade goods out on the counter in the summer, they would get moldy even quicker than store-bought.
  
  why are you comparing 4-day-old bread to bread fresh from the oven? wow yeah it really doesn't compare, what genius observation. what kind of storage makes it as good as fresh bread from the oven, pray tell?
  
  Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
  Stale bread, no thanks. Even no bread at all is better than that.
  But freezing it and reheating it afterwards also works OK for some types of bread.
  
  Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
  But don't you get it? Here in the US, we can't do that because we've got to drive an hour to the grocery store once a week (or less)! Uphill, both ways, fording rivers and traversing icy mountain passes! Waaah!
  Obligatory NotJustBikes on how there is a better way
  
  Downvoters are brain dead. Science aligns with the taste buds on this one. Freeze your bread, you degenerates! Doesn't take terribly long to thaw, doesn't become dry and stale af like fridge bread.
  Hi, it's you from the future, older and wiser, take your fucking bread out of the fridge!
  
  Keep it in the bag and then warm it up in a toaster oven. Imagine eating sad room temperature bagels...
  
  My fridge bread tastes exactly the same for weeks?
  
  That's not bread, but some bread looking cardboard then.
  
  It's freshly baked daily at my local market, not the kind that sits on a shelf for months. If your bread can't last a few days in the fridge then it's also probably not bread...
  
  Please don't ruin freshly baked bread in the fridge! Do you have no taste at all?
  
  Once again it stays tasting exactly the same after a quick warm up in the toaster oven. Maybe you should clean your fridge.

664 comments