Why do my tortillas and English muffins last so much longer than my other bread?

[Hello_Again]

@Mister_Rik

Correct, I’m talking about flour tortillas straight from the package. As for fat content, the Mission brand I usually buy uses vegetable oils. Salt is listed under the “Less than 2%” section (since others have mentioned salt content).

It doesn’t take a lot of salt for it to act as a preservative.

jtur88, Lime (Calcium Hydroxide) is a fungicide.

[Doug_Bowe]

@Hello_Again

Well dang I thought corn tortillas were cooked on an oiled surface. So much for that theory.

However, if flour tortillas do contain fat, it is consistent with my theory, and consistent with my experience that bread with fat stales slower than bread without fat.

Flour tortillas contain fat. True Mexican tortillas (the ones you get around here) use lard. Corn does not.

[DCnDC]

@Hello_Again

It doesn’t take a lot of salt for it to act as a preservative.

And salt is almost always in the “less than 2%” section, because salt is extremely powerful as a seasoning. Some foods that most people would consider to be very salty:

[ul]
[li]McDonald’s French fries: 266 mg/117 g = 0.2% salt[/li][li]Doritos, Nacho Cheese flavor: 310 mg/50 g = 0.6%[/li][li]Dill pickle: 1181 mg/135 g = 0.9%[/li][li]Ham: 1.2%[/li][li]Spam: 767 mg/56 g = 1.4%[/li][/ul]

By comparison, seawater is 3.5% salt.

[Francis_Vaughan]

@HoneyBadgerDC

The article may say that but my personnal experience says otherwise. I routinely keep a loaf of bread about 3 weeks in the firdge. Different brands behave differently but if kept out of the fridge I experience either molding or sogginess most of the time toward the end of the second week. I have not experienced bread going stale in a very very long time.

The staleing process refers to a specific thing - the mechanism where soft bread goes hard - even if it has not lost any moisture content. It isn’t either drying or going mouldy or any other process - it refers only the way nice fresh bread ceases to be fluffy and soft, The linked article describes very well what happens. How the actual internal structure of the bread changes over time. A lot of cheap factory breads have agents in them that slows this process, some to the point where bread will go mouldy first. But really good artisan bread doesn’t have these additives, and you get fantastic bread when fresh, but bread that will be clearly stale in only a couple of days, and even faster if you put in the ordinary refrigerator. Either freeze or room temperature preserves such bread the best. My favourite bread is nectar of the gods the day it is baked, but suitable for toasting only after three days.