Being new here I too was confused when I saw those "odd" posts. Bread is a botanically derived source of complexed carbohydrates. I wouldn't throw 30 loaves found in a Safeway dumpster into my pile but there should be no reason those last few stale slices in your kitchen can't be added.

Gack!

No, it's not a joke, gatormom. It's just one woman singlehandedly trying to save the compost.

gatormom, we all compost bread. We secretly pretend not to compost bread, because annpat, her royal highness of composting, has a soggy bread phobiasize = 1>

Some of us have come to refer to the process of composting old bread, here on these fabulous forums, as "Taking Wilber for a Walk".

In the old, dusty annals, you might find stuff like "I piled 5 inches of UCG, OGC, shredded bark, I Took Wilber for a Walk, a weeks worth of potato peels, and it heated up to 165º in no time"

Yes, it's a joke. It took me a while to figure it out, too. I put oddments of bread, rice, pasta, and even plain cooked beans into my compost. (Small amounts only, b/c large amounts of leftovers don't exist around here; my dogs are very omnivorous.)

Go ahead and compost ends of loaves or whatever bread you have in mind. The bugs/critters will LOVE it.

David!!
I'm feeling so betrayed! When I think of all the times....

No, it isn't a joke. It's a travesty is what it is.

Personally , I do not put bread products in my compost simply because my cattle much prefer it . And in turn , I much prefer their end product in my compost pile .

Great messages!

The problem with bread is bread mold. There are some who are allergic to bread mold and composting bread creates bread mold. If you and your family do not have a problem with bread mold then go for it.

I work in a business park that also has a bread delivery service. Every now and then there is a dumpster full of bread and if it is a grind weekend I will grab 50 or 100 loaves to add to the grinder. If any loaves are edible, I make a side trip to the local duck pond.

I open the loaves and let them dry out a couple of days then mix them with the other things I grind. Last load was 1/3 bread crumbs, 1/3 bush clippings, and 1/3 shredded paper and cardboard. Works well except you have to turn it more often because the bread makes the pile more dense and more difficult to get air into it. If you do not turn it twice a week the pile will go anaerobic.

Totally random tidbits...

There are, on average, half a dozen various molds (pin molds, penicilliums, trichoderma, etc.) beginning to germinate on your loaf of bread within 12 hours of it coming out of the oven, before it's even shipped out to you.

The typical germination rates of most of these molds is typically 21-30 days provided there is the occasional exchange of fresh air within the bag - ergo, someone opening it to get a slice.

Without this exchange of fresh-air the newly germinated mold spores will go dormant and eventually - very+ slowly - die out. A great way to preserve your loaf of bread is to suck as much fresh air out of the bag before closing it or use an "ogygen absorber" tablet (not the same as a silica gelpack) to keep the O2 levels lower.

---
None of these molds are thermophilic and will die out when the compost pile reaches temperatures over 120(F) and any still viable spores will die out when temperatures reach 140-160(F). However many of these molds are the principle decomposers of cold composting and are great way to provide "seed" decomposers into your pile.

Bokashi composting uses some of these molds along with various yeasts to break down the compost materials through these feeding molds as well as the yeasts fermentation process. You can even compost meats and fats using this method.

Personally, I compost as much bread as I waste, which is typically only a couple slices worth per month but if you're thinking of using bread on a scale like ralphs, provided you're balancing it out with other browns you'd still be fine.

-- Amateur Mycologist
(w/ mold allergies, heh.)

Ach!! Gross!! I'm never buying bread again - after tomorrow...

What do they say? "Too much info." or "I didn't need to know that." or as my 13 year old says "Overload!!".

OK, good info. Just goes to prove that you do learn something new every day. :O)

... half a dozen within 12 hours??? Wow!

They're the most prevalent forms of mold in the world. If you pick up a garbage bag of coffee grounds from starbucks and let it sit in a rather dark place for a week or two (with the bag mostly closed but still open enough for some air exchange) you'll have it covered in trichoderma (forest green) and pencillium (blue / blue-green) molds when you come back.

Learned a lot about these darn things when I grow portabellas a couple times. Trichoderma especially...

"A great way to preserve your loaf of bread is to suck as much fresh air out of the bag before closing it..."

Y'know Arjo_reich, my housemates already think I'm pretty damn weird with all the composting stuff. I dunno if I'm up for being called "the breadsucking guy." :)

All the best,
-Patrick

p.s. Good post though, thank you for all the detailed information.

Tiffany, if you think bread is scary, you better not eat cheese either...

See what I'm saying?

we don't use compost piles/bins or worm farms all this happens in our garden beds under the mulch, all our bread or baked products like that inveriably end up in the garden beds, as do all rottable materilas from the kitchen and we have no undesirable affects if there is in fact any to be had(maybe apart from attracting rodents and if the were a concern then no kitchen scraps would get recycled as rodents like them all).

so for rodents we run bait stations as i reckon all gardeners would need rodent control anyway, they like vege' gardens and will eat all fruits and cabbages etc where they stand or fall.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

It's a sin to compost bread. Old bread is meant to be fed to chickens. Annpat got chickens just so she wouldn't have to put her old bread in the compost pile; didn't you, Annie?

Anyone afraid of mold shouldn't go near compost. The stuff in my compost totally grosses my husband out.

I am allergic to mold, but I really don't buy all this crap the media dishes out about toxic mold killing people. I believe it's possible, but pretty darn rare.

I happened to have had a mold treatment guy at my house today. I had 2 plumbing leaks in the same bathroom 2 weeks apart, with water damage and obvious mold. I will be reasonable and take modest measures to limit it, but won't go nuts over it.

Face it, mold is everywhere, including in the air we breathe every with every inspiration. And I don't think the the bathroom exists that doesn't contain mold spores, whether they're visible or not.

And my compost is full of apparent mold.

Karen

I did, Polly. And the beauty of the chickens is that they eat it so fast, there's no chance meeting of atmospheric moisture and wheat.

I wonder if someone would let me author a FAQ on Bread in the Compost. I think we need one.

In the rare occasion that I have spare bread. Usually when family visits bringing
with them white bread which we don't eat much of. they go in the pile and disappear
quick enough.

still say bread in compost is perfectly fine... :shrug:

and I want chickens simply because nothing does better at eating the bugs in the lawn. Three hens could eat my entire yard clean of ticks and whatnot in about a week... ;-p

You know those 9X13" baking pans? Last summer we collected enough slugs from the garden to fill one about a third full. A visitor had the brilliant idea of tying a string to the pan and dragging it across the lawn in front of our chickens, Kathleen and Cecelia. Funny! I tell you.

We don't have bread for the compost since getting chickens either come to think of it.

annpat - I totally know what you are talking about. There is always a couple of cereal bits at the bottom of my kids bowl, and who do you think gets to clean that out? Gives me the hee-bee-gee-bees!

Our moldy bread goes into the compost UNDER whatever was there to begin with. There is NO way I want to see it again in any state other than compost. It breaks down pretty fast once it's in there (and dare I say...gulp...moist!)

We compost our stale bread too. I can't even think about "making" anything with it. My gag reflex kicks in if I even think about...bread pudding! I mean, really, who thought of that?

Anita

I scored $29.98 on ebay for my Che Guevera partially composted bread crust.

Anita!! I'm actually a little teary. Finally! Someone else gets it! (And those Oreo commercials? Gack! But I don't have to tell you.)

I always thought I'd like to have children, but I couldn't do the cereal bowl clean up. They say it's different when it's your own, but I suspected that wasn't true.

I'm walking on sunshine, Anita. You have made my day---no, my whole year!

You're all nuts. Stale or moldy bread doesn't bother me at all. There's always that and bottles and jars of expired things in my fridge and pantry.

It's mayo that makes life unbearable. If I could just eliminate that from the world, I could live in peace. I sometimes have to leave the room when someone eats in it my presence. I used to try to make potato salad right down to the last step, then let my husband put that gross-white-stuff on it. Now, I don't even try. I won't buy it. If my husband does, it often disappears mysteriously.

Karen

I can tolerate homemade mayonnaise but I get a little creeped out by the concept of "off the shelf" mayonnaise myself as well. It is, after all, a raw egg whites + oil suspension. And pasteurization, for as much as we trust in it is not the same as sterilization - which destroys the flavor of foods - so there is always the possibility of salmonella in mayonnaise.

(** random trivia - grow your own egg laying hens and the odds of them having salmonella in their eggs is next to nill **)

Of course the scariest thing of all is dairy milk. Did you know that "crohn's disease" used to be something that only effected dairy cattle until the last 75 years or so. You can literally plot crohn's disease in humans and our increased consumption of dairy milk in this country on a parallel curve.

Both of these problems (crohn's disease & salmonella) stem from the same cause. Intensive animal farming. Pack them on top of each other so that they can't move, can't turn around, can't do anything but contract and communicate diseases among each other... ew.

Victory Garden anyone?

OK, you had to bring up milk too. I don't do milk either. It has nothing to do with germs. I can't recall ever tasting either mayo or milk, though Mom says I did drink milk when I was a baby. I do eat food that contain milk, cereal with milk, etc. But I don't do mayo in any shape or form.

Stale bread, OTOH, is fine. I eat it all the time. Toast it, annapat, smear on PB & J, and you can't tell it's stale. :-)

Karen

I have to apologize for starting this whole thing. I made an innocent inquiry and didnt realize that I was unleashing the wrath of Kahn by doing so.

This'll be my last post on the topic and Im keeping my sammich making planerians to myself.

hmmph.

Paul, are you telling me that your chickens eat slugs? Mine won't touch them. I think I've got to get ducks.

Doris, apology accepted. :^)

I got the soggy food thing too, but it only applies to actually eating it, I have no issue putting it in the compost, it disappears before I see what it becomes. It has improved with age but it is only recently that I can pour syrup on pancakes, before I always dipped each piece in the syrup right before eating it, so it wasn't soggy by the time I chewed. THE worst thing ever, and possibly what started the soggy bread problem as a kid was "chipped beef on toast". It's like this meat gravy poured over toast. I still gag thinking about it.

My best friend has the mayo thing, to the same extreme degree. She will now let us eat it in her presence, but that is a BIG step for her.

Kat

The only time I had a problem with mayo was once on dinner break at work. We had a new employee, first night on the job, the head of a major department. He was eating a sandwich with way too much mayo on it.

But that wasn't the problem.

The problem came when I looked up from my meal, and the poor guy had a huge gob of mayo on his nose! Right on the tip of his nose! My immediate problem was controlling my laughter. My secondary problem was debating whether it was better to tell the poor new guy, or leave it be and ignore it and hope he wiped it off before he walked out of the lunch room and other people saw it.

While I don't like huge amounts of mayo on anything, I otherwise don't have a problem with it, or with bread in the compost.

Fun thread!
:)
Dee

Ralph Dean - You GRIND up stuff? Sounds like something I've been looking for. Will you tell us what you use?

Isn't mayo just creamy syrup of ipecac?

Here in the SW, if air can get to bread, old bread does not mold or become soggy, it petrifies. My chickens have a petrified roll out in the coop that I thought they might peck at, but it's been there for several days. I stepped on it, and it's so petrified that it hurt my foot.

I put shredded wheat leftovers in a bowl of water (for the chickens) - set it on top of the seedling lights and forgot it. It petrified, and took 3 dogs taking turns licking on it for 24 hours to get it out of the bowl .

You need to move the SW if you hate soggy things. Oh, and I forgot to mention - what's a slug????

Cheers,
Michelle

All you mold-lovers would REALLY get a kick out of making your own homemade yogurt... hehehe. Water + milk powder + 1 T of regualar yogurt set in a warm place = lots of yummy moldy yogurt in 12-15 hours!

Seriously, its fun to do even if you're too scared to eat it :)

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Homemade-Yogurt/Detail.aspx

"Isn't mayo just creamy syrup of ipecac?"

Oh Michelle! Now that I've learned that you're a riot, I'm going to have to search for other posts from you.