My 10 year old granddaughter’s class was given an assignment at the beginning of the semester for a science fair experiment. For her project, she decided she wanted to test the effect of temperature on mold growth in bread. So we’ve been trying to help her grow mold on bread at various temperatures: cold (in the garage), room temperature, and warm (under a heat lamp).
Suffice it to say, we’re on our third or fourth iteration of trying to grow moldy bread since early January, with no success. However, the bread I took out of the bread drawer this morning to make toast had mold all over it. :smack:
The science fair bread has been kept in zippered sandwich bags so that it doesn’t dry out.
The bread that was in the bread drawer was just whole grain sandwich bread in the wrapper it came in.
It’s not unusual for bread (or hamburger buns) in our bread drawer to get moldy after a week or so. So I didn’t think it would be so hard to intentionally try to grow moldy bread!
Putting my store bought dinner rolls into an additional (ziplock) bag, when I get home, generally doubles the time it takes before they start to mould.
My guess is the zip lock keeps out a LOT more air than the bag it comes in. Should have left it in the kind of bag it comes from the store in, I think!
Perhaps your bread drawer has a dusting of mold spores that infect new breadstuffs kept within. Your controlled (sealed sandwich bags) breads may be pretty sterile. It may be useful to ‘infect’ your experimental breads by either leaving them exposed on the countertop for a few hours, or similarly put into your bread drawer, before packaging them and moving them to temperature controlled environments.
This could actually be an awesome science lesson. She started with the idea for one experiment, determining the temperature sensitivity of mold growth, and accidentally made another discovery, mold spores don’t penetrate plastic bags. You might consider changing directions and seeing what kind of containers prevent mold growth: plastic bags, paper bags, glass jars with loose lids, glass jars with tight lids, etc.
Just FYI - most commercially produced bread products contains a mold retardant calcium propionate. So, if you are over a certain age, your experience with bread getting moldy years ago would not be a useful metric nowadays.
