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.
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.
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...
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
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'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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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!
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...
It changes the taste, though. Like, it's probably not noticeable for cheap chocolate, as that tastes flat to begin with, but proper chocolate should be kept at room temperature...
It warms up and develops its taste in your mouth. Im pretty picky about chocolate quality but i still prefer the expensive ones below room temperature. Unless its like mousse ones. Maybe im just weird idk.
There are certain chocolates I won’t buy in the summer, because above 25 degrees they get spongy and below 15 degrees they are flat and hard. I think it’s why most drugstore chocolate in the U.S. tastes like cocoa scented candle wax. It has to withstand the heat.
The reverse is also true sometimes. Coconut "oil" for example is always a solid where I grew up, and it caught me by surprise seeing it actually being sold as a liquid in normal oil bottles.
I really enjoy coconut oil as a rough weather gauge.
I cook with it a lot, but prefer it to be in liquid form for easy measure (which only happens in the warmer bits of summer here), so in winter, I keep a jar of it on top of a particularly warm heat vent.
I keep my place at 60f/15.6c in winter or it costs a fortune to heat. When it’s relatively warm out, the heat doesn’t kick on often enough to melt it, but when it’s real cold/windy the entire thing will be liquid.
How are you able to keep yourself warm enough with 15-16c of room temperature, though? I can sleep with 18 and above, do daily stuff and touch water regularly without much hassle, but even that drains a lot of energy from me. Below 18 would be a high risk of catching an illness if I am staying home those days.
Heated mattress pads on my bed and couch, mostly. And a heated chair pad when working. They cost a ton less to run than filling a drafty space with gas-warmed air, and are mostly sufficient. A month of both of the big pads being constantly on, on high, barely touches my electric bill, but my gas bill for heat… I keep it that cold because that’s still around $200 usd/mth. If I bump it to 65/18.3, it shoots up to the $350-400+ range. And since I’m not actually comfortable at 18.3 either (26-33/80-90 is about my sweet spot), might as well just keep it at 15.6 and save the money :)
So those, and fuzzy socks, fuzzy pajama pants, and a fuzzy bathrobe. Maybe a high-heat pad here and there, if I’m feeling luxurious or my back hurts. A friend of mine does something similar, but uses heated vest and socks to take the warm along with (rechargeable ofc).
Yeah, I’m basically built for tropical environments. I’m cold at 75 unless I have a sweatshirt on. And I still wear that big fuzzy bathrobe through most of summer (I don’t have AC, and never have, but I do have dehumidifiers for when it’s really warm, and that’s generally enough).
Hmm, good to know. Electricity rates here are not quite good to go with electric heating, even if for a smaller area, but might be worth checking out to use from time to time. Thanks for the details.
The nice thing about it is that this isn’t actually heating an area, it heats you and the mattress/blankets around you, basically making a microclimate in your sleepy cocoon. Very very efficient, even if your electric rates aren’t great (mine really aren’t either, but it still barely touches it, they just don’t use a lot of electricity). I put my heated pad under a padded pad to help retain and even out the heat, and it helps a lot.
Happy to help either way! So here’s some more info!
60-100 watts is roughly average energy use, but you can get lower, and smaller pads will use less.
Energy Cost = (Wattage x Usage Hours) / 1000 x Electricity Rate
For example, let’s assume your heated mattress pad has a wattage of 75 watts, you use it for 8 hours per night, and your electricity rate is $0.12 per kWh. The calculation would be as follows:
Energy Cost = (75 watts x 8 hours) / 1000 x $0.12 = $0.072 per night
For one mattress pad for a 30-day month with the above assumptions, it would run you a whopping $2.16/mth.
Warm cloth. The problem is mainly that if it gets warmer during the day, then you end up having a lot of condensate from air humidity on everything and that is the perfect condition for mold to form.
I keep Reese's peanut butter cup minis in the freezer when family sends them (not for sale in Japan currently). My wife likes Alfort which are chocolate + biscuit cookies and turned me on to putting those in the freezer. Somehow, it's much better that way; I didn't expect the biscuit to be changed or, if so, certainly not better, but it is.
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.
Was it unsalted butter? Salted butter can be left out for a while, certainly more than a few days without concern, but unsalted needs to be refrigerated.
For the last few years, I've been using butter I leave out in a covered butter dish on the counter since I learned that's fine. It's always been a stick of salted butter which I typically finish within 2-3 weeks and that's never caused any problems. I wonder if it being unsalted would really change things that much...
I've been made fun of for thinking butter tastes/feels off after sitting out on the counter, but it absolutely does. If you want soft butter, take it out like an hour before or soften it with heat and whip it back into a homogeneous mixture. I usually cut a pad and melt it on top of whatever I'm making before spreading it. Anything but leaving it on the counter to go bad...
Cheese is a weird one though. Definitely refrigerate cheese.
I always thought it was OK to leave salted butter out. Been doing it for years never had a problem I can remember. I also don't eat tons of butter so would guess I've left it out longer than two weeks
Today's salted butter doesn't have enough salt in it to preserve itself like that.
Back in like Oregon Trail days they would pack butter in enough salt to preserve it for travel, and people got used to the taste (hence why they still make the two types) but today's butter is just not salty enough.
Interesting thanks for the info. Like I said I haven't had any issues so far, but now I think ill pay attention to how long it takes me to go through a stick of butter
I also did that for years, with 5 people in the house we went through softened butter fast.
Then as kids grew up and moved out, I realized it was taking WAY longer to go through. I gave up and leave it in the fridge now. Then again, going through it much slower means that I'm buying much nicer quality butter 😁.
This is the first I've heard of a butter bell. I've been leaving salted butter out for years, but I bought a glass food storage container with a snap on lid that is basically the exact size of a stick of butter. I suppose it's accomplishing almost the same thing, although a tiny amount of air does get inside especially as the stick is eaten.
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.
I used to live in a desert and bread easily lasted for weeks. Once I moved to what is essentially a rain forest, it doesn't last more than 5 days. I have to refrigerate it.
Yes, you're right about the humidity being the biggest factor, and that will also make bread go stale. It also depends on whether it's prepackaged bread or freshly baked. Prepackaged bread is less likely to arrive with mold spores, and the packaging keeps humidity out during transit and storage. Once it is opened to the humidity, especially in tropical climates, refrigeration will slow any growth.
For people in arid climates, their refrigerator might actually be more humid than their cupboards.
Greatly depends on your country. Dutch bread is very fresh when bought with little to no preservatives. So we freeze our bread, like 90%of us, cuz it will mold in the fridge after like 4 or 5 days if not sooner.
I'm guessing you don't live somewhere with high heat & humidity, or if you do you run your AC a lot. We keep bread on the counter and in the fridge but not all bread is equally resistant to mold, even some packaged bread. In the winter it's a lot more forgiving. Also we just open the windows and run fans quite a bit in the summer.
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.
Good general rule. Only exception I can think of is there are a few fruits they'll refrigerate in the back and then often display at room temp, since a few hours at room temp doesn't hurt them much. Apples, oranges, stuff like that.
It's pretty common actually. There is a large walk-in cooler in the back where perishable backstock is stored. When new apples are needed, a big box is fetched from the cooler and the apples are restocked in the display.
Most of the stuff is kept in the back cooler, only things left out are those harmed by refrigeration like tomatoes or those that don't go bad for a long time.
With apples it extends their life by quite a long time though. Probably over double.
products with any sort of packaging also say how they should be stores pre and post-opening, e.g. canned goods are generally fine to keep in a cupboard until opened where they then need to be in the fridge.
I'm so confused right now. We aren't completely vegan but we mostly cook vegan at home. But like, that's the majority of the stuff that goes bad? All the fresh vegetables and fruit? Vegan spreads, milks and yogurts go bad just as fast as dairy ones. I have the feeling oat milk goes bad faster than homogenized cow milk. Eggs never go bad. I hardly remember ever tossing a piece of meat or fish, but hell whenever I have to buy a 2 kg sack of carrots because it is just so much cheaper than 700g of carrots and 1/2 of it goes bad (and it's still cheaper) or I buy a perfect bell pepper just to open it to find mold or that brown stuff in avocado or I buy organic lemons and they are 2/3 moldy the next day I can't even... I have a special storage thing for potatoes and they still go bad occasionally. Yesterday garlic from the store was half rotten. Or when you didn't notice a tomato got a hit in your bag and that injury proceeds to mold... Or when your kid tossed the apples on the floor and they all develop bruises faster than you can eat them all and they just aren't that tasty anymore... We are trying our best to go to the store for fresh stuff daily but I feel like it is still a fight against nature.
So for real, what are you guys talking about? Absolutely no offense, I am genuinely curious why our experiences differ so vastly.
You can dry-age beef for up to 4 months. Some people go even longer. Of course, you could also can it like fruits and vegetables, but I've never been a fan.
Then there's mastodon meat dug out of the tundra that dogs would still eat...
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.
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.
Bloom it up! Local farm stands have a good bet of being unwashed eggs. Can't say I blame the FDA on this, given the awful state of dairy and chicken farms that we get these eggs from...
It’s dry by the time it reaches you, but is still protecting the eggs by filling in all the pores in the eggshell. Basically, eggs in america have porous shells, which means they spoil faster in the open air.
Longer! In Scotland, mostly cool, mine sit on the counter for a couple of months at a time.
I spin them to check if they're still okay. You spin them on the counter, briefly place a finger to stop them and release. If the yolk is still fluid the egg will start to spin again, and they're good to use. If the inners have congealed they stop dead, and go in the bin.
Eggs that have been washed (i.e. had the cuticle remove) should generally be stored in the fridge or used very quickly. Eggs in either case shouldn't generally be moved from refrigerated storage to the counter unless they're going to be used very quickly because the condensation can do bad things.
I was told that they last the longest if kept out of the fridge the first week or so and afterwards you should put them in a fridge. And for some reason if they are already refrigerated they need to stay refrigerated no matter how old. No idea if there is a scientific basis to it, but it sounds at least plausible that there is.
And for some reason if they are already refrigerated they need to stay refrigerated no matter how old.
It has to do with washing. Eggs, fresh from a chicken's poophole, have a protective layer around them that allows you to store them at room temperature. If you wash them though, the protective layer disappears and the egg shell becomes porous, and as a result you need to refrigerate them. If you buy eggs that are already refrigerated, they are likely refrigerated because they have been washed, so you should keep them refrigerated as well.
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.
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.
Juuust skip that fridge step. Take slices out the freezer when you wake up. Slices thaw by the time your morning ritual is done and you're ready for brekky. If toasting anyways, don't even really need to wait for thaw. No stale fridge taste you need to get used to.
This thread kills me, so many people eating stale-ass bread. :c
The freezer does keep bread fresher longer (as long as you aren’t storing it in a self defrosting freezer long enough to get freezer burn). It literally freezes the staling process. And fridging bread actually accelerates staling. Something to do with water molecules getting squeezed out of starch molecules or something; I don’t remember the details.
"The sickos were FREEZING bread! UPDATE: I have since seen the error of my ways and apologized to my parents and thrown all bread I own into the freezer, and discarded any notion of leaving bread out"
My grandparents do that. I leave it on the counter, but always say I'm going to freeze it, especially if I get it at costco, which sells you 2 loafs at a time. The only problem is I never have enough room to shove an entire loaf of bread in there. Freezer for bread is fine. If you pull out a few slices, it basically defrosts in like 10 min or use microwave for 10 seconds, and if you wanted toast, just toast it.
I just threw out an entire loaf because it was on my counter for 5 days and saw mold... must be the type of bread as well since it normally lasts weeks just fine. Since I'm always buying what's near the cheapest that's on sale I am always buying different brands.
I'm kinda intimidated by this whole thread. I'm scared to mention that I really hate thawed bread (I tried room temp, microwave, oven and toaster). (I even tried different freezers.) If I buy bread, then it's either the very smallest amount at the bakery when I really feel like good bread, or just a bun, or supermarket bread with preservatives. But mostly I just live a bread free life.
We do that with sandwich bread because it is cheaper to buy a double loaf pack and the freezer keeps it fresh until the second one is needed with zero noticeable difference in taste and texture.
I’m more annoyed my mom keeps the oat milk out of the fridge for most of the day and wonders why it goes bad so quick. I usually bring my own when I visit.
My parents (and grandparents, I think) used to put batteries in the fridge. I did too, until I learned that it’s not a good thing to do. Something about the humidity.
I do freeze bread. Mainly because the bread I can eat (gluten free) is expensive and not easy to get in the size I like (there are sizes!), so I buy multiple and freeze the excess. I also freeze my ground coffee (I really should start grinding my own; with the horror stories I’ve heard about pre ground…). I do refrigerate butter, jelly, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and hot sauce.
NiCad/NiMH and some other older battery tech it can prolong shelflife, especially if you're in a hot/humid climate. Lithium batteries it doesn't really do anything.
I got a cheap [electric] burr grinder a while back ($40 I think?) and it's a wonderful thing. Being able to choose your grind to your own taste is a wonderful thing.
Edit: If you're on the fence, you can get an even cheaper ($10) hand burr grinder to see if you like it. Definitely worth a try.
Summary: a fatty substance containing cafestol (raises LDL cholesterol only in humans) gets hold back by paper filters but not by French press, Turkish and boiled coffees, or coffees using mesh filters.
This I knew. It should also be noted that when you use anything other than a paper filter (those reusable brass mesh ones), then you risk higher ldl cholesterol; not just French presses.
I'm on a keto diet right now, and while keto bread is an amazing innovation that's made it much easier than the last time I did this, I have to keep that shit in the freezer because it seems to get moldy a lot faster than normal bread, often well before the expiration date.
My grandparents would throw dying batteries in the freezer. They swore they’d get “more juice” out of them that way. No idea if it actually did anything.
High salt/vinegar content condiments are perfectly fine at room temp for a weeks to months in dry to mostly dry moderate temp climates. That is why air conditioned restaurants which have consistent temps and low humidity leave them out on the tables.
The label is there so someone in Florida doesn't have it go bad in a couple months on their counter. Plus refrigeration extends the time it can go without spoiling, which is great for condiments that are rarely used.
That too is a strong possibility but if the container airtight it probably shouldn't see a ton of loss of flavor mover time. And a lot your major soy sauce is predominantly just salty and savory without much of other complex flavors going on.
…the reason jelly/jam/preserves are canned is because they are not shelf stable otherwise. I just threw out a jar because it molded in the fridge…
Peanut butter is shelf stable, but we usually get the stuff that’s just peanuts and salt, so it separates at room temp.
Mustard, ketchup, & soy/fish sauce… sometimes it’s just convenient to keep most of my bottles and jars together in the fridge door.
I’m hypersensitive to rancid oil. Also the healthy parts of olive oil & fish oil degrade with time, heat, sun and oxygen exposure. The fridge slows this down. That said, I keep my cooking oil under the counter.
Ours always crystallized and needed to be microwaved or soaked in hot water anyway so it’s kind of a 6 of one; 1/2 dozen of the other situation in my experience.
Same for honey, as cold accelerate the crystallization process.
Peanut butter is basically oil already, but putting it in the fridge might help keeping it less oily. I eat organic 100% peanut butter and it is often oily when I open it. I think that’s why some have palm oil in it.
Soy sauce should be salty enough to store out the fridge but I prefer to keep it in the fridge for some reason.
Oyster sauce contains sea food, so straight in the fridge!
I used to buy a lot of """"natural"""" peanut butter. The kind in glass jars that separates after a while, so you have to stir the jar every time you use it. After a while, I started keeping it in the refrigerator because that stopped it from separating at all. Just stir once when opening the jar for the first time, then into the refrigerator it goes, and it never needs stirring again.
If it's in a sealed plastic bag it doesn't go stale until long after it would have molded on the counter. I refrigerate mine because I buy Costco sized sliced bread and it takes me 2 months to go through it. If you toast your bread, the staleness is unnoticeable
A lot of these things only need to be refrigerated to preserve flavor, not to stop spoilage. If you go through a bottle of ketchup in 3 months there is little benefit to refrigerating it, if it takes 3 years for you to finish it, it should probably stay in the fridge.
Some peanut butter brands require refrigeration to prevent mould. Others recommend it because it stops the oils from separating. Brands like Kraft don't require any refrigeration at all
Refrigerating oil will stop it from going rancid, but I've only ever needed to do this with used deep frier oil
Honey depends on the quality. Real honey will basically never turn bad (they found containers with thousand year old still edible honey), but the cheap stuff is sometimes mixed with sugar syrup etc. and then it needs refrigeration.
The refrigeration is either to extend flavor or to prevent spoilage in hot and humid locations where mold can build on the parts of the container that dry out if it isn't used often.
This one absolutely turns on what kind of peanut butter you have. Jif/Skippy etc. shouldn't go into the fridge. It was engineered, for better or worse, to be shelf stable and turns into silly putty if it's cold. Most "Real" peanut butter separates like a mofo if it's in the pantry, requiring frequent stirring, and many recipes will never quite be solid enough to spread well. In the fridge, they are much easier to deal with, though my latchkey Xennial ass still prefers the wondrous combination of peanut-inspired substances and mid-century food science.
How long does it take you to eat the bread that mold starts to appear ??? In my house bread is pretty much gone in two days, most times less than that.
Oh yeah 😱 In some places in the tropics really only the fridge is safe from ants getting into everything otherwise. They bite their way through regular plastic bags no problem.
God, the ants in Turks & Caicos were a nightmare, and food is crazy expensive. People who live there must have all their shit locked down or they'd be broke in a week. I always say I want to live somewhere tropical, but that had me rethinking some things.
Locals probably pay a different price than tourists. I have never been there specifically but this seems to be the rule in places where there is large income inequality between people who live there and visitors.
I'm not sure - we went to the grocery store in the residential area. We always do. It's just expensive to ship anything, so islands are always really pricey.
And not just mice. If designed correctly, they would help keeping the correct humidity so the bread neither gets too dry (and solid) nor too humid (and moldy)
Lived in the middle of nowhere and the nearest grocery store was 25 miles away. Once every 4-6 weeks we'd go to town and get maybe 10-12 gallons of milk, a shit load of bread, and all the other stuff.
Milk in my country get pasteurized and heated to a very high temp for a short amount of time. Unopened it stays fresh for a few months that way. We keep like 10 packs or so in the cellar.
i mean yeah it's basically just water, why the fuck not?
i do the same with margarine, so i never have to be caught with an empty packet and no backup.
because butter is expensive as shit and it doesn't taste that much better, and i'm pretty sure the idea that butter is magical is to a significant degree just dairy industry propaganda.
margarine is fine, cheap, and doesn't rely on an industry that exploits and mistreats animals, so i see no reason to use butter.
I put my bread in the microwave as I never use it. I might as well call my microwave a bread box. However, if it gets really humid I may put the bread in the fridge for a day or two.
I love cold condiments and fruit. My dad put Pepto Bismol and eye drops in the fridge.
Only ever did it for mold reasons. I don't like refrigerated bread because refrigeration sucks the moisture out. If i'm going away for the weekend though and i've got a loaf and it's gonna be a hot weekend i'm certainly going to store the bread in the fridge.
I've had roommates where we just ended up buying our own ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, fish sauce, Sriracha, and probably other things I can't remember because they were weirdos that refrigerated those things. I kept mine in the cupboard, they kept theirs in the fridge.
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
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 refrigerate my bread, english muffins, and tortillas too!
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.
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.
Same. In the winter here, bread can last two weeks, but in the summer it'll mold in a day or two.
That's legit. Not really in Canada though.
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.
It just goes into the toaster. Works better than frozen bread with crystals.
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.
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.
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.
It changes the taste, though. Like, it's probably not noticeable for cheap chocolate, as that tastes flat to begin with, but proper chocolate should be kept at room temperature...
False. All chocolate should be frozen.
It warms up and develops its taste in your mouth. Im pretty picky about chocolate quality but i still prefer the expensive ones below room temperature. Unless its like mousse ones. Maybe im just weird idk.
There are certain chocolates I won’t buy in the summer, because above 25 degrees they get spongy and below 15 degrees they are flat and hard. I think it’s why most drugstore chocolate in the U.S. tastes like cocoa scented candle wax. It has to withstand the heat.
I put dark chocolate in the freezer, not for preservation or anything I just love the texture.
crystalline chocolate is the shit, then when you chew it it just sort of turns into gravel and melts, so good
Gotta give the lead some fridge time too
Wait, yeah I guess it does make sense that people living in cold climates wouldn't put chocolate in the fridge. TIL
The reverse is also true sometimes. Coconut "oil" for example is always a solid where I grew up, and it caught me by surprise seeing it actually being sold as a liquid in normal oil bottles.
I really enjoy coconut oil as a rough weather gauge.
I cook with it a lot, but prefer it to be in liquid form for easy measure (which only happens in the warmer bits of summer here), so in winter, I keep a jar of it on top of a particularly warm heat vent.
I keep my place at 60f/15.6c in winter or it costs a fortune to heat. When it’s relatively warm out, the heat doesn’t kick on often enough to melt it, but when it’s real cold/windy the entire thing will be liquid.
How are you able to keep yourself warm enough with 15-16c of room temperature, though? I can sleep with 18 and above, do daily stuff and touch water regularly without much hassle, but even that drains a lot of energy from me. Below 18 would be a high risk of catching an illness if I am staying home those days.
Heated mattress pads on my bed and couch, mostly. And a heated chair pad when working. They cost a ton less to run than filling a drafty space with gas-warmed air, and are mostly sufficient. A month of both of the big pads being constantly on, on high, barely touches my electric bill, but my gas bill for heat… I keep it that cold because that’s still around $200 usd/mth. If I bump it to 65/18.3, it shoots up to the $350-400+ range. And since I’m not actually comfortable at 18.3 either (26-33/80-90 is about my sweet spot), might as well just keep it at 15.6 and save the money :)
So those, and fuzzy socks, fuzzy pajama pants, and a fuzzy bathrobe. Maybe a high-heat pad here and there, if I’m feeling luxurious or my back hurts. A friend of mine does something similar, but uses heated vest and socks to take the warm along with (rechargeable ofc).
80 to 90 °F is your sweet spot?! Did I read that right?
Yeah, I’m basically built for tropical environments. I’m cold at 75 unless I have a sweatshirt on. And I still wear that big fuzzy bathrobe through most of summer (I don’t have AC, and never have, but I do have dehumidifiers for when it’s really warm, and that’s generally enough).
Hmm, good to know. Electricity rates here are not quite good to go with electric heating, even if for a smaller area, but might be worth checking out to use from time to time. Thanks for the details.
The nice thing about it is that this isn’t actually heating an area, it heats you and the mattress/blankets around you, basically making a microclimate in your sleepy cocoon. Very very efficient, even if your electric rates aren’t great (mine really aren’t either, but it still barely touches it, they just don’t use a lot of electricity). I put my heated pad under a padded pad to help retain and even out the heat, and it helps a lot.
Happy to help either way! So here’s some more info!
https://electricado.com/how-much-electricity-does-heated-mattress-pad-use/
Most of the below comes from that link-
60-100 watts is roughly average energy use, but you can get lower, and smaller pads will use less.
Energy Cost = (Wattage x Usage Hours) / 1000 x Electricity Rate
For example, let’s assume your heated mattress pad has a wattage of 75 watts, you use it for 8 hours per night, and your electricity rate is $0.12 per kWh. The calculation would be as follows:
Energy Cost = (75 watts x 8 hours) / 1000 x $0.12 = $0.072 per night
For one mattress pad for a 30-day month with the above assumptions, it would run you a whopping $2.16/mth.
Warm cloth. The problem is mainly that if it gets warmer during the day, then you end up having a lot of condensate from air humidity on everything and that is the perfect condition for mold to form.
I purchase mine as a solid but by the time I get it home it's mostly liquid
yea if you live outside I guess
yea that's what I'm saying
I’m here for crunchy chocolate. Also really depends on what season for Canada definitely can get toasty.
I know i'm not the only one prefering chocolate refrigerated (and some variants frozen). Not the creamy type for me.
Lindt with nuts is way crunchier in the freezer.
I keep Reese's peanut butter cup minis in the freezer when family sends them (not for sale in Japan currently). My wife likes Alfort which are chocolate + biscuit cookies and turned me on to putting those in the freezer. Somehow, it's much better that way; I didn't expect the biscuit to be changed or, if so, certainly not better, but it is.
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.
Was it unsalted butter? Salted butter can be left out for a while, certainly more than a few days without concern, but unsalted needs to be refrigerated.
Not sure. Sounds like unsalted based on what you said.
i eat salted butter that stay days outside the freezer without getting sick, never tested with unsalted, or my immune system is better idk
For the last few years, I've been using butter I leave out in a covered butter dish on the counter since I learned that's fine. It's always been a stick of salted butter which I typically finish within 2-3 weeks and that's never caused any problems. I wonder if it being unsalted would really change things that much...
did she just leave it out uncovered? one of those ceramic dish things with a cover seems to keep it out fine.
Not sure. But those dishes definitely aren't airtight.
I've been made fun of for thinking butter tastes/feels off after sitting out on the counter, but it absolutely does. If you want soft butter, take it out like an hour before or soften it with heat and whip it back into a homogeneous mixture. I usually cut a pad and melt it on top of whatever I'm making before spreading it. Anything but leaving it on the counter to go bad...
Cheese is a weird one though. Definitely refrigerate cheese.
They claim cheese needs to "breathe" and apparently that is indeed a thing for some French cheese, but not have it sit unrefrigerated for a few days 😒
Depending on the cheese, breathing just means being exposed to oxygen, you can do that INSIDE the refrigerator if it is clean
Someone tried to convince me to get a heated butter knife. I think I'm seeing their point on it
Can also just heat a regular butter knife over the stove or more ideally in hot water
My SO is a counter butter er. I've told her it's grow but she won't listen. She gets her own butter now.
My SO does leave butter in a butter dish but only a small amount.
We got a butter bell, which is the best of both worlds. Room temperature butter kept airtight. Lasts 10-14 days, I'd estimate.
I always thought it was OK to leave salted butter out. Been doing it for years never had a problem I can remember. I also don't eat tons of butter so would guess I've left it out longer than two weeks
Today's salted butter doesn't have enough salt in it to preserve itself like that.
Back in like Oregon Trail days they would pack butter in enough salt to preserve it for travel, and people got used to the taste (hence why they still make the two types) but today's butter is just not salty enough.
Interesting thanks for the info. Like I said I haven't had any issues so far, but now I think ill pay attention to how long it takes me to go through a stick of butter
I think that goes way further back, because Brittany's butter is traditionally salty. Like, cronchy salty.
Never had a problem with salted butter but mine's European, dunno how y'all do it.
I also did that for years, with 5 people in the house we went through softened butter fast.
Then as kids grew up and moved out, I realized it was taking WAY longer to go through. I gave up and leave it in the fridge now. Then again, going through it much slower means that I'm buying much nicer quality butter 😁.
I've never heard that, but if it works, it works!
It will eventually go rancid. More oxygen getting to it and more heat will speed that up.
This is the first I've heard of a butter bell. I've been leaving salted butter out for years, but I bought a glass food storage container with a snap on lid that is basically the exact size of a stick of butter. I suppose it's accomplishing almost the same thing, although a tiny amount of air does get inside especially as the stick is eaten.
Yeah, butter changes color too. Something happens if it turns soft.
I do this with Colby cheese. mmmm, greasy cheese
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.
I used to live in a desert and bread easily lasted for weeks. Once I moved to what is essentially a rain forest, it doesn't last more than 5 days. I have to refrigerate it.
Yes, you're right about the humidity being the biggest factor, and that will also make bread go stale. It also depends on whether it's prepackaged bread or freshly baked. Prepackaged bread is less likely to arrive with mold spores, and the packaging keeps humidity out during transit and storage. Once it is opened to the humidity, especially in tropical climates, refrigeration will slow any growth.
For people in arid climates, their refrigerator might actually be more humid than their cupboards.
Humidity is an interesting metric. It's a percentage of the airs total capacity to absorb moisture.
It's not a measure of percentage of water(vapour?) in the air.
Air can have 100% humidity. It can't have 100% water
Greatly depends on your country. Dutch bread is very fresh when bought with little to no preservatives. So we freeze our bread, like 90%of us, cuz it will mold in the fridge after like 4 or 5 days if not sooner.
I'm guessing you don't live somewhere with high heat & humidity, or if you do you run your AC a lot. We keep bread on the counter and in the fridge but not all bread is equally resistant to mold, even some packaged bread. In the winter it's a lot more forgiving. Also we just open the windows and run fans quite a bit in the summer.
Naw, I'm too lazy for that.
I've gotten some bread with no preservatives and it went in a couple days
If i bake bread i will eat it within 2 days
*2 hours
This is why I don't bake bread.
Well with some breads yeah... Its healthier and cheaper than store bought bread so I dont mind
Yeah, but...
Worth it
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.
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.
Good general rule. Only exception I can think of is there are a few fruits they'll refrigerate in the back and then often display at room temp, since a few hours at room temp doesn't hurt them much. Apples, oranges, stuff like that.
You don't need to refrigerate apples and oranges? Just leave them in the counter for easy snacking.
lol what supermarket is moving apples and oranges in and out of the refrigerator every day for display purposes?
It's pretty common actually. There is a large walk-in cooler in the back where perishable backstock is stored. When new apples are needed, a big box is fetched from the cooler and the apples are restocked in the display.
Most of the stuff is kept in the back cooler, only things left out are those harmed by refrigeration like tomatoes or those that don't go bad for a long time.
With apples it extends their life by quite a long time though. Probably over double.
products with any sort of packaging also say how they should be stores pre and post-opening, e.g. canned goods are generally fine to keep in a cupboard until opened where they then need to be in the fridge.
There are a lot of things sold unrefrigersted that need to refrigerated after opening. Like every jar of spaghetti sauce I've ever bought.
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.
I'm vegan too, and God bless how long our food lasts.
I'm so confused right now. We aren't completely vegan but we mostly cook vegan at home. But like, that's the majority of the stuff that goes bad? All the fresh vegetables and fruit? Vegan spreads, milks and yogurts go bad just as fast as dairy ones. I have the feeling oat milk goes bad faster than homogenized cow milk. Eggs never go bad. I hardly remember ever tossing a piece of meat or fish, but hell whenever I have to buy a 2 kg sack of carrots because it is just so much cheaper than 700g of carrots and 1/2 of it goes bad (and it's still cheaper) or I buy a perfect bell pepper just to open it to find mold or that brown stuff in avocado or I buy organic lemons and they are 2/3 moldy the next day I can't even... I have a special storage thing for potatoes and they still go bad occasionally. Yesterday garlic from the store was half rotten. Or when you didn't notice a tomato got a hit in your bag and that injury proceeds to mold... Or when your kid tossed the apples on the floor and they all develop bruises faster than you can eat them all and they just aren't that tasty anymore... We are trying our best to go to the store for fresh stuff daily but I feel like it is still a fight against nature.
So for real, what are you guys talking about? Absolutely no offense, I am genuinely curious why our experiences differ so vastly.
I just now for the first realize that my food waste has gone to almost 0 since i'm vegan.
Same. Maybe the odd head of lettuce.
You can dry-age beef for up to 4 months. Some people go even longer. Of course, you could also can it like fruits and vegetables, but I've never been a fan.
Then there's mastodon meat dug out of the tundra that dogs would still eat...
Maybe, but the smoothies are disgusting.
Mmm, mastodon smoothie.
Yes, how to dry age meat would be very useful to a vegan.
Fruits from warm climates on the other hand, take cold damage and go bad sooner in 4°C.
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.
Bread absolutely lasts longer when refrigerated
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
Batteries.
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.
I'm aware. I have raised chickens. I was trying to make a funny, but seem to have missed the mark
Yeah well I wasn't aware of this. Replies to your comments aren't just for you, you know; they're for the whole community.
I was referring to the downvotes on my comment, not the reply
America also doesn’t vaccinate their chickens.
Can't have autistic chickens! /s
Instead they put antibiotics in the chicken feed
Imagine being so concerned about bacteria outside that you punch holes in the "packaging" lol
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.
Bloom it up! Local farm stands have a good bet of being unwashed eggs. Can't say I blame the FDA on this, given the awful state of dairy and chicken farms that we get these eggs from...
From Europe, never had a slimy coating on my eggs.
It’s dry by the time it reaches you, but is still protecting the eggs by filling in all the pores in the eggshell. Basically, eggs in america have porous shells, which means they spoil faster in the open air.
Take an egg, up close, and smell it. You smell that? Now you know what it is.
Do Yanks have smelly eggs or something
it's perfectly standard to keep eggs in the fridge here in sweden, no reason not to since it just makes them last forever.
They last 3-4 weeks anyway (with that bloom thing).
Longer! In Scotland, mostly cool, mine sit on the counter for a couple of months at a time.
I spin them to check if they're still okay. You spin them on the counter, briefly place a finger to stop them and release. If the yolk is still fluid the egg will start to spin again, and they're good to use. If the inners have congealed they stop dead, and go in the bin.
Put an egg in a glass of water. If it floats, discard.
You can keep unwashed eggs in the fridge for months.
Wastes space imo
yeah i can see that, if you need the space more and eat eggs a lot anyways then it definitely makes sense to keep them outside the fridge.
But for me who eats an egg every now and then and buys 6 or maybe 10-12 packs, i don't even consider keeping them outside the fridge.
I don't eat eggs but my spouse does store them on the counter. Fresh farm eggs don't need refrigerators.
Eggs that have been washed (i.e. had the cuticle remove) should generally be stored in the fridge or used very quickly. Eggs in either case shouldn't generally be moved from refrigerated storage to the counter unless they're going to be used very quickly because the condensation can do bad things.
Yes of course. But he buys the kind that have the cuticle.
I was told that they last the longest if kept out of the fridge the first week or so and afterwards you should put them in a fridge. And for some reason if they are already refrigerated they need to stay refrigerated no matter how old. No idea if there is a scientific basis to it, but it sounds at least plausible that there is.
It has to do with washing. Eggs, fresh from a chicken's poophole, have a protective layer around them that allows you to store them at room temperature. If you wash them though, the protective layer disappears and the egg shell becomes porous, and as a result you need to refrigerate them. If you buy eggs that are already refrigerated, they are likely refrigerated because they have been washed, so you should keep them refrigerated as well.
I am American but I buy my eggs from a local farm, where they do not do more than a light wash with water. No fridge for those.
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.
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.
Peanut butter does NOT go in the fridge. 🤬
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.
Juuust skip that fridge step. Take slices out the freezer when you wake up. Slices thaw by the time your morning ritual is done and you're ready for brekky. If toasting anyways, don't even really need to wait for thaw. No stale fridge taste you need to get used to.
This thread kills me, so many people eating stale-ass bread. :c
Even if you don't want cold bread, you shouldn't skip the fridge step. The slower the thawing process, the better the bread.
Maybe it's just me, but fridge bread doesn't taste stale. The cold bread tastes more like a desert than room temperature bread.
Been freezing bread for years as I don't eat it fast enough.
Quick 30s zap in the microwave and it's warm and soft and ready for sandwiches
That works well for toast that you only ever plan to eat toasted.
The freezer does keep bread fresher longer (as long as you aren’t storing it in a self defrosting freezer long enough to get freezer burn). It literally freezes the staling process. And fridging bread actually accelerates staling. Something to do with water molecules getting squeezed out of starch molecules or something; I don’t remember the details.
I love hitting these threads a few hours late
"The sickos were FREEZING bread! UPDATE: I have since seen the error of my ways and apologized to my parents and thrown all bread I own into the freezer, and discarded any notion of leaving bread out"
When I bake bread I usually freeze half but thaw it when I need it because fresh bread goes bad fast.
My grandparents do that. I leave it on the counter, but always say I'm going to freeze it, especially if I get it at costco, which sells you 2 loafs at a time. The only problem is I never have enough room to shove an entire loaf of bread in there. Freezer for bread is fine. If you pull out a few slices, it basically defrosts in like 10 min or use microwave for 10 seconds, and if you wanted toast, just toast it.
I just threw out an entire loaf because it was on my counter for 5 days and saw mold... must be the type of bread as well since it normally lasts weeks just fine. Since I'm always buying what's near the cheapest that's on sale I am always buying different brands.
Clearance rack bread.
I'm kinda intimidated by this whole thread. I'm scared to mention that I really hate thawed bread (I tried room temp, microwave, oven and toaster). (I even tried different freezers.) If I buy bread, then it's either the very smallest amount at the bakery when I really feel like good bread, or just a bun, or supermarket bread with preservatives. But mostly I just live a bread free life.
My parents did that too, and they're the reason why I don't do that, because I grew up despising thawed bread.
We do that with sandwich bread because it is cheaper to buy a double loaf pack and the freezer keeps it fresh until the second one is needed with zero noticeable difference in taste and texture.
Fresh baked bread without a ton of preservatives only lasts four or five days if you don't freeze it.
It's much better than putting it into the fridge
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.
Chocolate is much better refrigerated
Wait you guys don't refrigerate your bread?
I’m more annoyed my mom keeps the oat milk out of the fridge for most of the day and wonders why it goes bad so quick. I usually bring my own when I visit.
I put bread in the freezer because ot goes moldy fast in this climate
Yeah because you should refrigerate bread
Jars of stuff which expired years or even decades ago. They still do.
Not my Patents but my grandparents, batteries.
Batteries. Paintbrushes.
Super glue
My parents (and grandparents, I think) used to put batteries in the fridge. I did too, until I learned that it’s not a good thing to do. Something about the humidity.
I do freeze bread. Mainly because the bread I can eat (gluten free) is expensive and not easy to get in the size I like (there are sizes!), so I buy multiple and freeze the excess. I also freeze my ground coffee (I really should start grinding my own; with the horror stories I’ve heard about pre ground…). I do refrigerate butter, jelly, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and hot sauce.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Batteries it depends on the chemistry.
NiCad/NiMH and some other older battery tech it can prolong shelflife, especially if you're in a hot/humid climate. Lithium batteries it doesn't really do anything.
Meaning it's a mostly outdated tipp.
Mostly outdated, but not "throw coins in aircraft engines" crazy. It's at least based on good advice, just a bit cargo-cult-y.
WhoTF is not refrigerating mayonnaise?
I got a cheap [electric] burr grinder a while back ($40 I think?) and it's a wonderful thing. Being able to choose your grind to your own taste is a wonderful thing.
Edit: If you're on the fence, you can get an even cheaper ($10) hand burr grinder to see if you like it. Definitely worth a try.
Ah, about ground coffee.
Summary: a fatty substance containing cafestol (raises LDL cholesterol only in humans) gets hold back by paper filters but not by French press, Turkish and boiled coffees, or coffees using mesh filters.
This I knew. It should also be noted that when you use anything other than a paper filter (those reusable brass mesh ones), then you risk higher ldl cholesterol; not just French presses.
I'm on a keto diet right now, and while keto bread is an amazing innovation that's made it much easier than the last time I did this, I have to keep that shit in the freezer because it seems to get moldy a lot faster than normal bread, often well before the expiration date.
My grandparents would throw dying batteries in the freezer. They swore they’d get “more juice” out of them that way. No idea if it actually did anything.
I was told to warm them up to get the last bits of juice out of them while camping. Wonder which it is?
I'm the first generation that decided to keep bread in fridge. My parents used wooden box.
That sounds like a great way to make stale bread…
Things we refrigerated that I’ve seen others not refrigerate:
Things we didn’t refrigerate that I’ve seen others do:
Edit: Just to clarify this is what my parents did and doesn’t reflect my adult opinions.
My soy and fish/oyster all say to refrigerate right on the label.
Since they already made the shit I'm ingesting, I'm taking their word for it.
High salt/vinegar content condiments are perfectly fine at room temp for a weeks to months in dry to mostly dry moderate temp climates. That is why air conditioned restaurants which have consistent temps and low humidity leave them out on the tables.
The label is there so someone in Florida doesn't have it go bad in a couple months on their counter. Plus refrigeration extends the time it can go without spoiling, which is great for condiments that are rarely used.
Some soy sauce recommends refrigeration on the bottle. Some don't. I don't know why.
Probably based how much salt is actually in the sauce. High enough salinity will basically kill any potential nasties.
I would wager it has more to do with preserving the flavor.
That too is a strong possibility but if the container airtight it probably shouldn't see a ton of loss of flavor mover time. And a lot your major soy sauce is predominantly just salty and savory without much of other complex flavors going on.
I like my ketchup refrigerated, not because it has to be, but because I like the contrast between cold ketchup and hot food.
…the reason jelly/jam/preserves are canned is because they are not shelf stable otherwise. I just threw out a jar because it molded in the fridge…
Peanut butter is shelf stable, but we usually get the stuff that’s just peanuts and salt, so it separates at room temp.
Mustard, ketchup, & soy/fish sauce… sometimes it’s just convenient to keep most of my bottles and jars together in the fridge door.
I’m hypersensitive to rancid oil. Also the healthy parts of olive oil & fish oil degrade with time, heat, sun and oxygen exposure. The fridge slows this down. That said, I keep my cooking oil under the counter.
Omigod honey.
Ours always crystallized and needed to be microwaved or soaked in hot water anyway so it’s kind of a 6 of one; 1/2 dozen of the other situation in my experience.
If I put oil in the fridge it gets solid
Same for honey, as cold accelerate the crystallization process.
Peanut butter is basically oil already, but putting it in the fridge might help keeping it less oily. I eat organic 100% peanut butter and it is often oily when I open it. I think that’s why some have palm oil in it.
Soy sauce should be salty enough to store out the fridge but I prefer to keep it in the fridge for some reason.
Oyster sauce contains sea food, so straight in the fridge!
I used to buy a lot of """"natural"""" peanut butter. The kind in glass jars that separates after a while, so you have to stir the jar every time you use it. After a while, I started keeping it in the refrigerator because that stopped it from separating at all. Just stir once when opening the jar for the first time, then into the refrigerator it goes, and it never needs stirring again.
I'd be remiss if I didn't post this every time someone mentions palm oil.
Oh my sweet internet. Now I know what I'll put on display next time I'll get drunk with my friends. Thank you very much sir!
You'll be horrified to learn where the ปลาร้า(fermented fish)lives in my own house as an adult 😂
Don't worry, I'll keep my eyes shut
Oyster sauce should be kept in the fridge, it helps it oxidize slower.
If it's in a sealed plastic bag it doesn't go stale until long after it would have molded on the counter. I refrigerate mine because I buy Costco sized sliced bread and it takes me 2 months to go through it. If you toast your bread, the staleness is unnoticeable
A lot of these things only need to be refrigerated to preserve flavor, not to stop spoilage. If you go through a bottle of ketchup in 3 months there is little benefit to refrigerating it, if it takes 3 years for you to finish it, it should probably stay in the fridge.
Some peanut butter brands require refrigeration to prevent mould. Others recommend it because it stops the oils from separating. Brands like Kraft don't require any refrigeration at all
Refrigerating oil will stop it from going rancid, but I've only ever needed to do this with used deep frier oil
Honey is just a hell no in the fridge
The Costco bagels are notorious for molding before you even get home…
I'm with you, but the first three only after they've been opened.
The unrefrigerated jelly is the only one that bugs me.
I actually switched my peanut butter stance as an adult, but only because I switched to real peanut butter and it separates slower in the fridge.
Honey depends on the quality. Real honey will basically never turn bad (they found containers with thousand year old still edible honey), but the cheap stuff is sometimes mixed with sugar syrup etc. and then it needs refrigeration.
Sugar is also a preservative though.
The refrigeration is either to extend flavor or to prevent spoilage in hot and humid locations where mold can build on the parts of the container that dry out if it isn't used often.
This one absolutely turns on what kind of peanut butter you have. Jif/Skippy etc. shouldn't go into the fridge. It was engineered, for better or worse, to be shelf stable and turns into silly putty if it's cold. Most "Real" peanut butter separates like a mofo if it's in the pantry, requiring frequent stirring, and many recipes will never quite be solid enough to spread well. In the fridge, they are much easier to deal with, though my latchkey Xennial ass still prefers the wondrous combination of peanut-inspired substances and mid-century food science.
Peanut butter.
Why.
Bananas. You shouldn't.
But my fridge has smells of other foods
Not my parents, me. Brown sugar goes in the freezer so it doesn't dry out and become a piece of granite.
Fruit, except for bananas
Photographic film
How long does it take you to eat the bread that mold starts to appear ??? In my house bread is pretty much gone in two days, most times less than that.
Paint brushes and rollers.
Someone I lived with temporarily kept the processed parmesan cheese (the dusty stuff in a jar) in the cupboard instead of the fridge. It baffled me.
I heard Australians put cereal in the fridge because of bugs
Oh yeah 😱 In some places in the tropics really only the fridge is safe from ants getting into everything otherwise. They bite their way through regular plastic bags no problem.
God, the ants in Turks & Caicos were a nightmare, and food is crazy expensive. People who live there must have all their shit locked down or they'd be broke in a week. I always say I want to live somewhere tropical, but that had me rethinking some things.
Locals probably pay a different price than tourists. I have never been there specifically but this seems to be the rule in places where there is large income inequality between people who live there and visitors.
I'm not sure - we went to the grocery store in the residential area. We always do. It's just expensive to ship anything, so islands are always really pricey.
I'm from Oz and I feel like I wasn't informed of this knowledge. Maybe I've been eating bugs this whole time.
Most cereals have a plastic bag inside to contain the contents. Maybe people don't seal it properly and it let's in little nasty creepy crawly-ses.
Sorry had to make the Oz joke
Hmm that would also make sense.
Slightly related but there used to be things called bread boxes. I think it was to keep mice from eating your bread.
And not just mice. If designed correctly, they would help keeping the correct humidity so the bread neither gets too dry (and solid) nor too humid (and moldy)
I did this when I lived in a cheap apartment in Houston, Texas, USA. Cheap and sturdy, but we definitely had bugs.
I'm in the US and I do this after living in some questionable apartments over the years.
Vanilla extract.
We kept milk in the freezer.
LOL why?
Lived in the middle of nowhere and the nearest grocery store was 25 miles away. Once every 4-6 weeks we'd go to town and get maybe 10-12 gallons of milk, a shit load of bread, and all the other stuff.
Milk in my country get pasteurized and heated to a very high temp for a short amount of time. Unopened it stays fresh for a few months that way. We keep like 10 packs or so in the cellar.
i mean yeah it's basically just water, why the fuck not? i do the same with margarine, so i never have to be caught with an empty packet and no backup.
But why do you eat margarine? If it's a dietary thing I get it but butter is ten times better it's worth the extra calories.
because butter is expensive as shit and it doesn't taste that much better, and i'm pretty sure the idea that butter is magical is to a significant degree just dairy industry propaganda.
margarine is fine, cheap, and doesn't rely on an industry that exploits and mistreats animals, so i see no reason to use butter.
Madness
Lotions and meds
I put my bread in the microwave as I never use it. I might as well call my microwave a bread box. However, if it gets really humid I may put the bread in the fridge for a day or two.
I love cold condiments and fruit. My dad put Pepto Bismol and eye drops in the fridge.
Cum socks
Eggs. Hot sauce. Ketchup. Soy sauce. Pickles. Kimchi. Mustard. Sriracha. Olives.
ketchup, apparently it's weird?
Camera film
I'm fine with refrigirating bread just to not let it try
pine nuts, chinese tiger balm, batteries, ketchup/mayonnaise packs from McDonalds
My father taught me to put LSD bloaters in the fridge.
Well... a lot but we live in the desert so peanutbutter isn't shelf stable otherwise
Butter, so do, some don’t.
Pralines and dick
Believe it or not: milk.
Batteries
When I see bread in the fridge I assume the people have mice
Only ever did it for mold reasons. I don't like refrigerated bread because refrigeration sucks the moisture out. If i'm going away for the weekend though and i've got a loaf and it's gonna be a hot weekend i'm certainly going to store the bread in the fridge.
When I buy half a bread I don't put it in the freezer but sometimes I put it in the refrigerator because my apartment gets really warm.
We don't have mice but put it in there because the humidity will cause it to spoil fast.
Apparently some people refrigerate butter
I've had roommates where we just ended up buying our own ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, fish sauce, Sriracha, and probably other things I can't remember because they were weirdos that refrigerated those things. I kept mine in the cupboard, they kept theirs in the fridge.