A lot of bakeries sprinkle some flour on their bread in order to keep them from sticking, and to give them a rustic appearance. And it really works. But sometimes that flour can seem a little strange, and you start to ask yourself if that is just flour or has mold started to appear on your bread? So let’s see how you can tell the difference between mold and flour.
Flour has a bright white color, a powdery texture, and emits no smell. Mold will have a greenish, or blueish, or dirty white color, and has an unpleasant smell.
Mold usually starts off as small white spots, and over time it will grow in size and change color. So, it’s not always that easy to tell the difference between mold and flour, especially if the mold is just starting to appear.
How to Tell the Difference Between Mod and Flour
When the mold expands and it changes color it is very easy to recognize it. The problem is when the mold just appears and it’s very similar to flour.
Now I’ll go over some pictures and tell you how to tell the difference between mold and flour.
Appearance
In this picture we have mold. And you can tell this due to the shape of the spots and their lack of consistency in color. Flour will always have the same color, no matter where it is on the bread. In this picture you can clearly see that some spots are more transparent than others.
Here we have lour. You can easily tell that this is flour due the consistency in color, and the way the flour is spread. Flour, no matter how you sprinkle it on the bread, tends to stay together in one or two big spots, or uniformly spread all over the bread.
Here we have mold, and you can easily tell that by the way the flour is spread, and due to the inconsistency of the color.
Again mold. Which can easily be told apart from flour due to the inconsistency in color, and the shape of the spots.
Texture
If you are not able to tell the difference between flour and mold by just looking at the white spots, you can take a knife and scrape some of it off.
Flour will come off as a dust, or sometimes if the flour has absorbed water it will come off as smaller chunks that can be easily broken down into normal flour. On the other hand mold will tend to stick to the knife.
Smell
Another way to tell the difference between flour and mold is the smell.
Mold has a unique musky smell that has nothing in common with the smell of bread, so it should be easy to tell the difference between the two of them.
But just a quick word of warning. Inhaling mold spores can be dangerous, so I would only recommend getting close to the bread and smelling it only as a last resort.
Another thing that you can do to tell if your bread has mold or flour on it is to know how mold gets on the bread in the first place.
Why Does My Bread Have Mold on It?
As we all know mold tends to grow on bread. But this is not because bread has something in it that grows into mold. No bread is baked at high temperatures that destroy any kind of bacteria or fungus. So if there were no interference, bread should simply go stale and become hard as a rock as time goes on.
Mold tends to grow on bread simply because bread has a lot of nutrients for mold, and it provides a good humid environment for it to grow.
The air is full of mold spores that are completely invisible and harmless. But if a few of those spores land on a bread, they will find the perfect environment to develop. And in a few days they will start to expand and cover the entire bread in mold.
So if the bread is not constantly kept in a sterile environment, there is a chance it will come into contact with one of those spores. And at that point there is nothing that we can do to save the bread. Or is it?
Can You Remove the Mold on the Bread
Can we simply cut off the part with mold from the bread and eat the rest? Or just scrape off the mold and continue as if it was never there? The short answer is no.
The slightly longer answer is that once mold starts growing on bread the whole bread is already filled with mold , even if we can’t see it. You can think of mold as a flour,or as a tree. The green, or blue stuff that we see on top of the bread is just one small part of it, the bigger and more impressive part is underneath that, and they are the roots.
So even if we remove the part that we see, the biggest part is still there. And the only safe thing to do is to throw it out.
How to Prevent Mold on Your Bread
I want to end this article by going over some things that you can do in order to keep mold as far away from your bread as possible.
Store Your Bread in a Cloth Bag
Cloth bags are ideal for keeping mold away from bread, as they manage to keep your bread sealed while still allowing enough airflow.
If you don’t have a cloth bag, you can use a clean kitchen towel. Or, you can order one from Amazon.
Don’t Use Plastic Bags
Plastic bags, especially sealable ones, offer the perfect conditions for mold to grow. So avoid storing your bread in them. If for whatever reason you don’t have anything else in which you can store your bread, at least don’t seal the bag and let air circulate, and store it somewhere away from the sun.
Use a Bread Box
While somewhat more expensive than a cloth bag, a breadbox is the ideal place to store any kind of bread.
The inside of a bread box has just the right amount of air circulation to keep mold from being able to form and just enough humidity to keep bread soft and fresh.
Bigger bread boxes tend to be better than smaller ones as they allow for more air flow. AS for the material, you will notice that there are a lot of options: bamboo, ceramic, enamel, plastic, etc. The only one that you should stay away from are the plastic boxes. Other than that you can feel free to get the one that you like the most.
Here is a link to the one I’m using to store my bread.
A Kitchen Drawer
A kitchen drawer has all the same benefits of a bread box. The only disadvantage is that instead of bread you could use that drawer to store something else. But if you have a drawer that you are not using, you can use that to store the bread, instead of buying a dedicated box.
Don’t Store Your Bread in the Fridge
In the fridge a bread will become moldy at a slower rate due to the temperature, that is true. But it will also go stale faster. So overall I wouldn’t recommend you to put your sourdough bread in the fridge.
So the fridge is not a good place to store your bread, if you want it to last longer. So what about the freezer?
Store Your Bread in the Freezer
This might surprise you but keeping sourdough bread in the freezer will make it last longer while keeping its taste and texture. And of course it will keep all mold away.
I have an entire article dedicated to how you can do this, which you can find here: How to Freeze Sourdough Bread Without Losing Taste or Texture. And here is the short version.
Here are 7 simple steps that you need to follow in order to freeze your sourdough bread without losing taste or texture:
- Let the loaf cool – The first thing that you want to do is to let the loaf cool off completely. If you were to use a loaf that is still hot or warm, it would produce a lot of humidity in the freezer, and in the end, you will only be left with a soggy slice of bread.
- Slice up your bread – As trivial as it might sound, this is an important step that you shouldn’t skip. If you want to freeze the whole loaf you will definitely fail. It’s impossible to freeze big chunks of food at home. The big frozen things that you see at the supermarket are usually frozen using liquid nitrogen(−320.8 °F). If you were to simply put the loaf in the freezer it will freeze, but it will lose its entire flavor and texture.
- Lay the slices on a tray – The reason why you want to first lay them on a tray, instead of simply putting them in a bag and being done with it, is because we want to obtain an even temperature distribution. If the slices were one over the other they wouldn’t be able to freeze correctly. And they would be stuck together.
- Place the tray in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes – From personal experience, I’ve noticed that the fuller my refrigerator is the more time the sourdough bread needs to spend inside. So if your refrigerator is relatively empty 15, maybe even 10 minutes might be enough. But if it’s full you might need to let it stay for 20 minutes.
- Take out the slices and place them in a plastic bag – For this step, you want to move as fast as possible so make sure that you have a resealable plastic bag near you.
- Remove air from the bag – After you place the slices in the bag you should try to remove as much air as possible, this will make your bread keep its flavor and texture intact.
- Store in the freezer
Defrosting the Sourdough Bread
My favorite way of defrosting sourdough bread is to put it in the toaster for just a couple of minutes. This way the bread will be warm as if it had just been taken out of the oven.
Or if you want you can leave it in the toaster for a few more minutes and toast it.
You could also just leave your bread on the countertop for 10 minutes to slowly defrost, both methods work just as well.
How Long Can I Store Frozen Sourdough Bread?
On average sourdough bread can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months.
The amount of time any kind of food can spend in the freezer depends on how well it’s sealed. This is why most frozen products at the supermarket are so tightly packaged.
So if you manage to completely suck out the air from the bag containing the bread you could store it for up to a year or more. But based on what most people can do at home without any special equipment, 3 months is the average.
Final Thoughts
In order to tell the difference between flour and mold you have to pay close attention to the color and shape of the spots. Flour is usually white, and has a uniform color. On the other hand mold won’t have a uniform color, some parts of it being more transparent than others, and the color is usually a mix of white and green. Mold is very rarely white, the only time when white is the predominant color is when the mold just appeared.
And don’t forget. Once you see mold on your bread you have to throw it out. If mold starts becoming visible, it means that the inside of the bread is already full of it, even if you can’t see it. And there is no proper way to get rid of it.