Staling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Staling is a chemical and physical process in bread that reduces its palatability. Stale bread is dry and leathery.

Staling is not, as is commonly believed, simply a drying out process. Bread will stale even in a moist environment, and stales most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing.

Although the precise mechanism of staling is still unknown, one important mechanism appears to be migration of moisture from the starch granules into the interstitial spaces, degelatinizing the starch. This results in stale bread's leathery texture.

[edit] Culinary uses

Specifically stale bread is an important ingredient in many dishes, some of which were invented for the express purpose of using up otherwise unpalatable stale bread. Examples include skordalia, bread sauce, croutons, haslet, gazpacho, french toast, and flummadiddle.

[edit] Destaling

Stale bread can be partially destaled by heating to 140 °F (60 °C) in a warm oven. This re-gelatinizes the starch granules.

[edit] References

• On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (ISBN 0-684-80001-2, 2004)
• The study of bread staling using visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, Feng Xie.