Bread Storage, Explained
Bread Often Moulds Before It Goes Stale
In an Australian summer, bread often does not get the chance to go stale. It goes mouldy first, and the usual fix makes it worse.
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Why Summer Ruins a Loaf So Fast
A humid Brisbane January, a Sydney week in the thirties, a Perth heatwave. You know the pattern. Buy a good loaf, bag it, and a few days later there is a bloom of mould on the crust. So you start putting it in the fridge.
Sealed Bread Sweats. Then It Moulds.
Mould needs warmth and moisture sitting on the surface of the loaf. An Australian summer kitchen supplies the warmth. A sealed plastic bag supplies the moisture: the loaf keeps giving off water, it condenses inside the bag, and it settles on the crust.
That is why bread in a plastic bag goes mouldy fastest in exactly the months you would most like it to last, and why, in a hot humid summer, bread often grows mould before it ever gets the chance to go stale.
Mould
Moisture has nowhere to go. It condenses, settles on the crust, and in a warm kitchen that is all mould needs.
Hard
Leave a loaf unwrapped and there is far less moisture for mould, but it dries out and goes hard quickly.
Bread Needs a Cover That Breathes
On a woven cotton bag it does the same job for a loaf. The cotton breathes; the beeswax lining slows the rate moisture leaves. The inside keeps enough moisture to stay soft, and the crust stays dry enough that it is far less likely to go leathery or grow mould.
In very hot, humid weather no cover makes bread last forever. What a breathable one does is stop the sweating that mould depends on, so that when a loaf does finally give up, it is usually because it has gone hard, not because it has gone mouldy.
One honest note. It works best on a whole loaf you slice as you go. Pre-sliced bread has far more cut surface exposed, and it dries faster whatever you keep it in.
If you want to try it on your next loaf
Try it on your next loaf. If it doesn't keep your bread better than what you do now, send it back.
