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Scientists Develop Sixty Day Bread
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC reports that scientists have developed a technique that can make bread stay mold-free for 60 days that could also be used with a wide range of foods including fresh turkey and many fruits and vegetables. At its laboratory on the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Don Stull of Microzap showed off the long, metallic microwave device that resembles an industrial production line. Originally designed to kill bacteria such as MRSA and salmonella, the researchers discovered it could kill the mold spores in bread in around 10 seconds. 'We treated a slice of bread in the device, we then checked the mold that was in that bread over time against a control,' says Stull. 'And at 60 days it had the same mold content as it had when it came out of the oven.' Food waste is a massive problem in most developed countries. In the US, figures released this year suggest that the average American family throws away 40% of the food they purchase — which adds up to $165 Billion annually. There is some concern that consumers might not take to bread that lasts for so long and Stull acknowledges it might be difficult to convince some people of the benefits. 'We'll have to get some consumer acceptance of that. Most people do it by feel and if you still have that quality feel they probably will accept it.'"
...you have to come back tomorrow.
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Table-ized A.I.
Quick heads up - they put the ingredients on the side of the bag.
The problem is over time nutrician in food declines. We're so obsessed with keeping food forever it may all end up with the nutricianal value of card board. On the bright side it may reduce waste but it would tend to be abused. Bakeries may decide they can run just one day a week and take their sweet time getting to you or better yet centralize so there are a couple of mega bakeries in the country that take their time shipping all over the country. Their idea of fresh bread may be a month old. It may not form mold but it could all taste like crap but if it saves corporations money get used to it. Remember tomatoes taste like rubber because they are picked green to make them easier to transport. Corporations only care about profit.
Okay, it resists mould, but does the bread resist going stale and hard?
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Please note - I make no comment on the quality of bagged vs home-baked bread - merely that our "suspicious" consumer can quite easily see what goes in to bagged bread to make it last.
Botulinum bacteria are obligate anaerobic, they can't survive in oxygen atmosphere. So you're safe with bread. And C. botulinum _spores_ are ubiquitous, so there's no sense in trying to prevent those.
It's more like a medical supplement preparation than actual food. Extremely purified starch. Without any of the essential B vitamins and fibers that are required to digest starch without getting sick, fat and stupid. (Which is also true for all white "bread".)
Not "can"... You *have* to eat this with a wide range of fresh foods. Otherwise it's outright dangerous for your health.
If you eat this thinking it's food, have fun with your diseases when you get old... (Please don't. I don't wish suffering upon anyone.)
Also, except in extreme situations, why would you need bread to last that long anyway? A normal bread (not a starch sponge) lasts a couple of days at room temperature, even without cooling. A normal 500g bread is eaten in 2 days. 3-4, if you bought a 1000g one for you alone, which is a stupid mistake that won't happen again. And the bakery has fresh bread every day. Even Sundays. They bake about as much as is bought... and leftovers go to the food bank to feed the poor. Nothing is wasted.
So this is a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
Source: Medical knowledge about nutrition that is well-known since the 60s, but apparently hasn't reached bread makers and consumers yet. And basic damn common sense.
Happy to hear that you live near a bakery and can go to the shop every couple of days, but not all the rest of the world[1] lives that way. The problem does exist, but maybe this isn't quite the solution.
I live in a household that is essentially gluten free, and all the commercial baked gluten free breads that I've found are pretty horrible (except for one fruit loaf which is only edible because it's put in the toaster first and smothered with butter), so I normally make it from a pre-packaged bread mix. The same solution should work with minimal effort for regular gluten bread.
[1] "rest of the world" is a term that may be foreign to you, but the concept is an actual real thing.
... 60-day old bread sounds worse than the usual pre-sliced white (Wonder) bread that you guys usually eat :(
Note to mods - I certainly wasn't aiming for Insightful/Interesting/Informative :)
More a sort of "+1 stating the bleeding obvious"
You can still make lots of pain perdu!
Purchase 40% less food. Duh!
I imagine 100% of a bag of bread is chemicals just like 100% of a person's body is chemicals. It's a good fit.
and have you seen how much of that is chemicals? well over 90% of it.
10% is not material? I thought bread was 100% chemicals, like everything else. If you have something which is not 100% chemical, you may be on track to winning 1 million GBP
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If you're going to put all that effort into steaming it, why not just bake fresh bread in 60 days instead?
I buy 1/2 sized loaves and freeze them, these loaves are sold in a breathable wrapping. I take them out a few hours before I need them (or pop in the microwave if I am in a rush). I don't buy bread that is wrapped up in a plastic bag - such bread is generally tasteless mush.
What's the big deal here?
McDonalds has figured out how to make an entire hamburger, including the bun, last for 20 years without molding.
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100% of everything is chemicals. But if you're insinuating that 90% of what's in bread is chemically altered or produced by some artificial means, you're insane, It's obviously mostly flower. Any preservatives they put into it are salts of one form or another. And sometimes they put high fructose corn syrup in it, which keeps it seeming fresh while lowering the water activity. But there's no need to speculate about any of this, because the ingredients are listed on the label.
Well, everything we put into our bodies is a chemical, even O2 and H2O.
The question is, how harmful are these chemicals? The flour is actually probably the most harmful ingredient in the bread. Our digestive tract isn't really equipped to process any kind of wheat unlike most herbivores (which we are NOT, in spite of what vegetarians/vegans/peta tells you) and it does have a substance that is rather toxic to our intestines - gluten (which by the way, they almost always list as a separate ingredient, even though it is part of the flour.)
Though probably worse than flour is bleached flour, which happens to have most of the nourishment removed from it, so you mostly just end up with the bad stuff.
Soy is also bad for you, pretty much on par with flour if not worse, and bread often includes it. Yeah, I know, the Chinese lived off of it for some long assed time, and so did blah blah other culture. These guys lived off of it because they literally had nothing else to eat, so either eat soy or starve. The Irish lived off of eating grass for a while as well, but I don't see anybody eating that, primarily because it mostly just goes right through you. Unlike say cows, we only have a single chamber stomach, and it pretty much doesn't do shit to break down the grass into anything that our intestines can absorb. The hippies had it wrong, stay away from soy.
http://www.utne.com/2007-07-01/Science-Technology/The-Dark-Side-of-Soy.aspx?page=3
Your homemade bread might include soy as well, namely from the oil you put in the pan to keep the dough from sticking to it, and most vegetable oils include soy as an ingredient (especially the cheap ones.)
To be honest, it's best to avoid bread entirely. Beef for protein and salad are generally the best things you can eat, dress it with extra virgin olive oil and vinegar.
Better than that, replace the beef with ostrich meat if it is available where you live, tastes much better, more nutritious, and is very lean. Plus if you're an eco geek, ostriches require less resources to raise than cows. If nobody sells it locally, you'll pay a lot for it unfortunately.
http://products.mercola.com/produce/free-range-ostrich/
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What could they be possibly putting in there that lets it last ten days, let alone sixty?
Anti-staling agents used in bread are fatty acids as monoglyceride and diglyceride and wheat gluten and enzymes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staling#Countermeasures
Okay, in the spirit of your comment:
What the freak is Google for?
Here's what you get when you lookup "hovis bread ingredients" (Hovis is the most popular brand in the UK and sadly plain white bread is still the most popular loaf): http://www.hovisbakery.co.uk/our-range/soft-white/soft-white
On that page it lists the ingredients (the same as it does on the bag) as follows:
Wheat Flour (milled from 100% British Wheat), Water, Yeast, Salt, Soya Flour, Fermented Wheat Flour, Vegetable Fat, Emulsifiers: E472e, E471 (made from Vegetable Oils); Flour Treatment Agent: Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C).
Starting from the end, I think your "dough conditioner" is out "flour treatment agent". Even some home bakers use Vitamin C in their breadmaking.
So I do some more Googling (try it, you'll like it) and discover that an 800g loaf typically has about 500g of flour and 7g of yeast and may be up to 45% water - we're running out of room for the "chemicals" now.
Onwards:
Vegetable fat - fat extracted from vegetables. Ha. Binding agent, also controls the gluten development to avoid over-rising.
Emulsifiers (binding agents, prevent the separation of ingredients, improve the texture). See http://www.laleva.cc/food/enumbers/E471-480.html for the specific ones used by Hovis.
Now, was that so difficult? Use your loaf, as we might say in Britain. Don't be "suspicious" of a product, investigate. You might not like what you find, but at least you'll know and your mind can be put to rest.
And yes, as I mention in another comment, I was being "funny" - I just have a hard time when people have the means to discover information, but instead choose to sit there and develop preconceptions.
That's interesting. I go to my local bakery and they put my fresh bread in a bag. Am I doing it wrong?
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I think what he means is that 10% of bread is Dark Matter
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Or store it in the freezer. Just defrost the slices you want to consume in the microwave and they will be just as fresh as newly baked bread.
That is particularly funny, since the type of treatment -- ultra-high temperature processing (or "UHT") -- that makes milk last longer than a few days is virtually non-existent in America, yet quite common in a number of European nations, including the Netherlands. Sure you didn't get the anecdote backwards there, ace?
They don't. McDonalds never successfully developed any method to make their cooked products imperishable. The reason the McDonalds standard burger can "last" for so long is, first, the dehydration due to the frying process and, second, the huge amount of salt they use. If you read reports on this subject you will notice it's always the basic 1 dollar burger, not the moister double cheese burgers, BigMacs, quarter pounders, etc..(Dammit I got hungry). Also just because it's not visible rotten, it doesn't mean it's safe to eat.
You can do this already... make your bread with honey instead of sugar. Bread made with honey will outlast sugar based breads 3:1 in time before mold sets in.
Problem is most bread companies dont want to do that, it reduces the CEO's pay by reducing profits.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most up-to-date figures I could find for the UK suggest that 76% of bread consumed is white, which given the amount of health advice we're exposed to is a little terrifying.
I like wb for toast (something quite comforting to me - I think it harks back to the simpler times of my childhood :) ), wholemeal/granary/wholewheat/malted whatever for use in sandwiches etc.
Just defrost the slices you want to consume in the microwave and they will be just as fresh as newly baked bread.
This raises the question: have you ever eaten freshly made bread?
Or, it raises the question: have you ever eaten defrosted bread?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The hardening of bread is actually caused by moisture in the air crystallizing the starches in the bread. If you could build a breadbox that would keep humidity very low, you could probably keep your bread good for a long time.
However, bread goes stale faster in the refrigerator because it speeds up the process of starch crystallization, so if you could store it outside of the refrigerator without mold spores developing, you have extended the life of your bread by quite a bit.
There's fresh milk, (almost) untreated, which only lasts for a few days, and then there's milk treated with UHT and/or other processes which lasts for many months. In the Netherlands, most supermarkets have lots of the former kind and only a liitle bit of the latter, since Dutch people apparently prefer the fresh kind for its better taste. In Belgium, just south of the Netherlands, it's the other way around. Aisles full of UHT milk and only a few packs of fresh milk. People are used to the different taste and/or don't care. Dutch people in Belgium often complain about the taste of our milk, until you give them the fresh kind and they go "yes, that's what it's supposed to taste like".
Same thing for European versus American bread: We Europeans (well, at least Dutch, Belgians, Germans, French,...) hate American bread: it lasts for weeks but tastes terrible. In the US, you have to really search for a good baker's shop to find anything resembling what we call "normal" bread.
I've eaten one year old yogurts and eggs (raw too). One out of 3 yogurts would blow in your face upon opening, and one out of 3 eggs was black evilness. The eggs were waxed and irradiated to keep them for so long. It was in Antarctica and since then I've stopped reading date limits.
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Have we already forgotten about the trans-fat ? There was a time when they were fairly creative with bread ingredients.
i think the whole "are microwaves dangerous" thing was settled with the whole mobile phone thing.
Newflash numbnuts - cholesterol is a vital part of our biochemistry. Without it cell membranes would fall apart. The problem comes when its eaten in excess. But you could say that about anything - salt, sugar, protein, carbs, even water.
AFWIW a high protein low carb diet is actually quite healthy. Protein doesn't give you heart problems OR make you fat. Ask any athlete. Though if you over indulge over a long period of time it can give you kidney issues. And bad breath.
As an American, I'd like to clarify something here: while I won't defend the horrendous bread that gets sold in mass-market superstores, those same mass-market superstores almost exclusively sell milk that has been subjected to nothing more than regular pasteurization. UHT milk has not ever caught on in the US, and in fact it is quite rare for a store to carry it at all. If you ask for milk at a store in the US (whether it's a gigantic superstore, a regular chain grocery store, a local grocery store, or even a convenience store), you will almost certainly be directed to a refrigerated aisle for regular pasteurized milk.
C. botulinum _spores_ are ubiquitous, so there's no sense in trying to prevent those.
Err, you missed the crucial "can food" component of his post. I also can food. Not so much because of cost (I think your time has to be worth less than 50 cents/hr to break even) but because I apparently have weird taste in food. For example I love canned brandied apples, peach -n- rum sauce, bourbon cherries... hmm I detect a pattern there. Interesting how tasty food canned with booze is, and how you absolutely cannot buy it retail in the USA. Also for awhile I was making my own mustard for the technical challenge (the exact timing of the reaction is important to the heat level, and balancing/working around the bitterness is also pretty interesting). I enjoy the chemistry of the whole canning activity. Acidity, sugar levels, salt levels, pressure canning is 10x cooler than water bath canning, etc. Aside from novelty and taste, canning also saves time when done right. For example the immense prep, measurement, tasting and fine tuning, and especially cleanup time for my homemade peach barbecue sauce is nearly the same for one piece of chicken or 24 canned halfpints so I'm far better off making 24 times what I currently need and canning the rest for near instant use. In CS notation the overall system of food making scales WAY less than linear with volume.
Anyway the "ball book of canning" and/or the stuff from the USDA will save your life (literally) WRT canning. Granny recipes and stuff you read on the internet will just get you food poisoning or worse (yes, there is worse).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Problem is most bread companies dont want to do that, it reduces the CEO's pay by reducing profits.
That's only how straw man capitalism works, not real world capitalism. In real world capitalism if bread made with honey were actually a superior product then although the CEO of an entrenched bread company might not want to produce it a CEO of an upstart would realize she could raise her pay by producing and selling it thus gaining market share, enriching her investors and leaving the entrenched bread company in the dust.
Of course, in "capitalism" as practiced by the US right now the entrenched bread company would get the government to pass some regulation that seemed reasonable but that was actually designed to hamper the competition. Perhaps new labeling or packaging requirements that, due to scaling effects, would impose much higher costs per unit on small producers.
Bread contains flour, water, yeast, and salt. Anything else and it's not bread.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The sugars are generally used when proofing the yeast, and that is usually only one or two teaspoons. You basically are giving it glucose to start making CO2. The yeast can get that from the flour, however it takes longer for the dough to rise. If you're producing bread at a bakery then you have access to a proofing oven, sugar is less important in that case, however it still is used to give white bread a more golden colour. Yes, I once worked at a bakery.
False. Bread gets hard because the starches move to a lower-energy state. Bread keeps well frozen; but in the refrigerator it goes stale faster because the starches change their physical structure. This change occurs more slowly at room temperature. It ceases at extremely low temperatures, and reverses at elevated temperatures.
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Why would you stop reading date limits if you are no longer in an environment where your food is specially treated to last long and when you've seen that even with extraordinary measures some of the food still goes bad?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I'm not really sure why I'm explaining all this as this is naught but common sense.
No, it's more like naught but bullshit. The proper way to store bread in the freezer is in a freezer bag that retains the moisture. Ice crystals form inside the back--that's moisture that's leaving the bread. You bring the bread out of the freezer and allow it to sit at room temperature in the bag until the crystals have disappeared, re-absorbing the water. Then you place it in a 350F degree oven for about 15 minutes to re-distribute the water.
Taken from an 80 year old man who has baked over six thousand different styles of bread and routinely freezes whole loaves, even if they're to be served in just a few days.
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Rye flour isn't normal. It barely has any gluten!
But, normal homemade bread with just water, salt, wholewheat flour and sourdough starter will stay fresh for a week or so.
Long rising periods are key. The yeast "farms" itself a probiotic environment which just happens to improve the keeping qualities of bread, and improve the digestibility of wheat.
that ultra-pasteurized crap is vastly inferior to the old pasteurized stuff, which is very much less good than raw milk. Similarly, reduced fat milk is inferior to whole milk--most of the nutrients are fat-soluble, and mostly HDL cholesterol is removed and what's left is mainly LDL, so you get a lot less calcium and a lot less good cholesteral and basically the same amount of unhealthy fat for "reduced fat". Terribly unhealthy.
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Not so much because of cost (I think your time has to be worth less than 50 cents/hr to break even) but because I apparently have weird taste in food.
Uh.... I can food to save time... lots and lots of time... like, hundreds of hours a month. Do you have any clue how long it would take me to make oxtail stew if I had to do it from scratch every single time? I make at least 14 pints at once.
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Which is why you can throw a stale slice of bread in the microwave for 5-7 seconds and have a fresh out of the oven slice of bread experience. Just be sure to eat it before it cools.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
For contrast, one of the most popular brand name white breads in the USA (Wonder Bread) has this list of ingredients.
Whole wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% of less of: soybean oil, salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), extracts of malted barley and corn, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate (to retain freshness).
I don't know what half of that crap is.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I'm a chemist. I also bake bread.
The volume of a gas is the area that it occupies, which is the volume of the container it fills at equilibrium.
So, both by volume and mass bread is 100% chemicals.
However, when I make bread I use chemicals like salt, water, flour, and yeast. The last two are mixtures (well, so are the first two, but even kitchen grade salt and water are reasonably pure).
And yes, bread composed of only those ingredients will only last about a day. Throw in butter or milk and it will last a bit longer. However, if you want to stick it on a store shelf you need to break out the stuff with long names (many of those stabilizers are in fact natural in origin, but much more highly processed).
I attended a class in which a food scientist basically made the assertion that any bread that didn't spoil after a couple of days wasn't fit for human consumption. His reasoning was that if bacteria don't want to eat it then you don't either.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Ok, keep eating that terrible bread for $0.05 cheaper because you think the invisible hand is always right.
Another straw man about Capitalism, the one about how it's only price that matters. Quality and other factors are integral to Capitalism. If your bread is of such quality that the other bread seems "terrible" in comparison and yours only cost $.05 more (in 2012 US dollars) then your bread will sell very well. The exception would be commoditized products wherein price is the prime determinant. But to be commoditized the quality has to be indistinguishable so your example doesn't work there either.
More importantly, however, is that the only alternative yet presented to "the invisible hand" is some bureaucrat(s) deciding for us. If I prefer to eat the terrible bread and spend the saved money on something else who's this guy to tell me I should prefer the other bread? Don't get me wrong, Capitalism stinks. It just stinks less than every other system implemented to date.
Enzymes naturally present in the wheat denature some of the starch into sugars that can feed the yeast. Added sugar is not necessary. See also "pre-ferment".
Interesting...My real world experience seems to be inconsistent with yours. I do this with all sorts of pastries to great success. In fact if it is extremely dry as well as stale I will moisten a paper towel and place over it to keep it from drying out further. My favorite is a blueberry muffin with a pat of butter. mmMMMmm
Of course if you go over 7 seconds you are correct. Perhaps your microwave is too powerful. Try 2-4 seconds. Obviously YMMV.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
For most people just looking for an excuse to eat butter (toast) or something to hold together a sandwich, bread IS a commodity.
While I suspect the percentage of true bread lovers on /. is perhaps higher than average since we're nerds and appreciate quality, the average man does not think twice about grabbing a loaf off the supermarket shelf. The mere situation of grabbing bread off the shelf compared to from a bonafide bakery says a lot about the state of bread in today's society.
More Twoson than Cupertino
and then
So if the US government practices an example of "straw man capitalism" in the real world, does that not make it "real world capitalism?".
The problem is that your academic version of capitalism has no baring on the real world. In the real world, the CEO would collude and conspire to increase profits at the expense of everything else, including and not limited to his shareholders and the future of the company. Because in capitalist america, short term profits drive YOU!
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Well, I'm no expert either but I agree this is all just silly semantics. What was the point again?
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