Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
What happens when things go stale?
Hey, Matt:
When bread goes stale, it gets hard. When hard cookies or crunchy cereal go stale, they get soft. Do they both end up with the same amount of softness and hardness? Do they meet in the middle somewhere? What's going on?
D, San Diego
Wait long enough and your cheez puffs and Wonder bread will eventually turn to lumps of damp, furry mold, probably about the same consistency. But since both have a shelf life longer than most good wines, you may have to leave them to your heirs before the full effect is achieved.
When bread goes stale, it's sort of "unbaking" itself. At the molecular level, at least. Lots of the mysterious things that happen in the oven reverse themselves in the breadbox. Just-baked bread is a sort of fragrant, fluffy, unhardened concrete-- a moist mass of gluten (wheat protein) studded with damp, gelatinized starch granules and filled with gas pockets. As the bread cools below 140 degrees, certain molecules inside the starch realign themselves, close ranks, and stiffen, squeezing out the water absorbed during baking. Once the gel around the starch stiffens, the bread is firm enough to cut. This is bread's optimum point. It starts going stale almost immediately.
Starch molecules continue to realign and stiffen, forcing out even more water. Within a week or so, you have a loaf of crumbly, dry starch and gluten covered with a leathery crust that has absorbed the squeezed-out water molecules. The whole process happens much faster in cold temperatures, so don't store bread in the refrigerator. Eat it right away or freeze it. The "stale" taste and smell of elderly bread comes from natural molds beginning to sprout. The industrial solution to all of this is vats of preservatives that slow the migration of water molecules and the growth of molds.
Crispy stuff, on the other hand, has already had the moisture baked or fried out of it. So crisp things don't have the same internal chemistry as a donut or a dinner roll. Sugar will also crispify baked goods. When sugar is heated, it turns to caramel but crystallizes again when it cools. And sugar crystals are "hygroscopic"; they rapidly absorb moisture from the air. So a crisp cookie is like a delicious sponge.
Here's something you might be interested in.
What happens when things go stale?
What happens when things go stale?
Hey, Matt:
When bread goes stale, it gets hard. When hard cookies or crunchy cereal go stale, they get soft. Do they both end up with the same amount of softness and hardness? Do they meet in the middle somewhere? What's going on?
D, San Diego
Wait long enough and your cheez puffs and Wonder bread will eventually turn to lumps of damp, furry mold, probably about the same consistency. But since both have a shelf life longer than most good wines, you may have to leave them to your heirs before the full effect is achieved.
When bread goes stale, it's sort of "unbaking" itself. At the molecular level, at least. Lots of the mysterious things that happen in the oven reverse themselves in the breadbox. Just-baked bread is a sort of fragrant, fluffy, unhardened concrete-- a moist mass of gluten (wheat protein) studded with damp, gelatinized starch granules and filled with gas pockets. As the bread cools below 140 degrees, certain molecules inside the starch realign themselves, close ranks, and stiffen, squeezing out the water absorbed during baking. Once the gel around the starch stiffens, the bread is firm enough to cut. This is bread's optimum point. It starts going stale almost immediately.
Starch molecules continue to realign and stiffen, forcing out even more water. Within a week or so, you have a loaf of crumbly, dry starch and gluten covered with a leathery crust that has absorbed the squeezed-out water molecules. The whole process happens much faster in cold temperatures, so don't store bread in the refrigerator. Eat it right away or freeze it. The "stale" taste and smell of elderly bread comes from natural molds beginning to sprout. The industrial solution to all of this is vats of preservatives that slow the migration of water molecules and the growth of molds.
Crispy stuff, on the other hand, has already had the moisture baked or fried out of it. So crisp things don't have the same internal chemistry as a donut or a dinner roll. Sugar will also crispify baked goods. When sugar is heated, it turns to caramel but crystallizes again when it cools. And sugar crystals are "hygroscopic"; they rapidly absorb moisture from the air. So a crisp cookie is like a delicious sponge.
Comments