Have you tried freezing it?

Refrigerating baked goods accelerates staleness, but most baked goods freeze well.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Well, yes...but 4 day old bread from the fridge is basically inedible as well because of the bad taste.

That's legit though.

I put dark chocolate in the freezer, not for preservation or anything I just love the texture.

Wait, yeah I guess it does make sense that people living in cold climates wouldn't put chocolate in the fridge. TIL

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.

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.

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.

My SO does leave butter in a butter dish but only a small amount.

Yeah, butter changes color too. Something happens if it turns soft.

I do this with Colby cheese. mmmm, greasy cheese

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'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

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.

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.

I'm vegan too, and God bless how long our food lasts.

Fruits from warm climates on the other hand, take cold damage and go bad sooner in 4°C.

That's because in America we're so concerned about contaminants on shells that we clean all the protection off the outside, making the shells porous enough for bacteria to get through. Store-bought eggs in the US so have to be refrigerated.

This is because of a difference in food safety standards. When eggs are laid, they’re covered in something called bloom. It’s a slimy coating which the chicken produces. It’s full of good bacteria, and it protects the eggs and prevents them from spoiling. So Europeans buy eggs with the bloom on them, and don’t need to refrigerate their eggs.

But in America, the Food and Drug Administration has strict regulations regarding animal poop near food. Namely, you can’t have animal poop near your food. Full stop, with very few exceptions. And since chickens poop out of the same hole they lay eggs from, part of the bloom is, in fact, chicken poop. So eggs in America have to be washed, to remove that chicken poop before they can be sold. But this also removes the bloom, meaning the eggs are unprotected and need to be refrigerated.

it's perfectly standard to keep eggs in the fridge here in sweden, no reason not to since it just makes them last forever.

I don't eat eggs but my spouse does store them on the counter. Fresh farm eggs don't need refrigerators.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Clearance rack bread.

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.

My parents didn’t just refrigerate bread. They stuck excess bread in the fucking freezer.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some soy sauce recommends refrigeration on the bottle. Some don't. I don't know why.

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.

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'm with you, but the first three only after they've been opened.

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.

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

peanut butter

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.

If you use "natural" or "organic" peanut butter (read, ingredients: peanuts) you'll want to refrigerate it. It helps keep the oil from separating. It'll be the consistency of jiff or other sugared brands for most of the jar. I usually take mine out of the fridge when you get towards the bottom so it doesn't get too hard.

If it's the more natural kind it can go rancid if you don't eat it fairly quickly. If it's peanut butter flavored frosting like Jiff then it doesn't matter really

So what do they do, chip it out of the jar and microwave it so it can be spread?

I've seen this but never investigated the logistics of consuming peanut butter that's hard as a rock.

Ugh. I dislike natural and organic peanut butter because I hate it cold.

I grew up with PB in the cupboard. *Never *had a problem with it. My wife on the other hand, PB goes in the fridge. She swears it tastes bad if it's not kept in the fridge. Other than taking up more space, I'm not going to argue with the person that is most likely to eat the stuff.

That's bonkers.

LOL why?

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.

Madness

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.

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.

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.

I'm in the US and I do this after living in some questionable apartments over the years.

I did this when I lived in a cheap apartment in Houston, Texas, USA. Cheap and sturdy, but we definitely had bugs.

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.