Timeline for Why does stale bread go soft in the microwave?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 22 at 22:22 | comment | added | jimchmst | The polymer chemists assured me that the various polymers in bread have a class transition temperature and microwaveing raises the T enough to exceed the various temperatures without driving off what water remains dissolved in the polymers. researchgate.net/publication/… | |
| Aug 21 at 1:31 | answer | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | timeline score: 1 | |
| Apr 7, 2020 at 14:01 | comment | added | David Mulder | @MaxW 5 years later, but the same happens to gluten free breads as well for whatever it's worth | |
| Aug 23, 2019 at 15:17 | comment | added | user43021 | Another possibility: fresh bread contains water, we can see that once water evaporates it gets hard. Does some water remains? Probably, but this might not be the only reason why it softens when heating it up. When you heat the 'dry' bread up it seems reasonable that some component in the mixture fuses and because of it, it softens. Probably water helps too...chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/96459/… seems relevant | |
| Jun 29, 2016 at 0:03 | comment | added | Karl | I'd say the residual water acts a plasticiser. When quickly heating the bread, it goes above Tg, becoming soft. If that's true, it should become stiff again quickly when cooling. Does it? | |
| Jun 12, 2016 at 9:14 | answer | added | Adam White | timeline score: 1 | |
| Nov 8, 2015 at 23:27 | comment | added | MaxW | Poked around a bit and I think the answer is the gluten content. Know when you cut into a cooked steak how juice will ooze out? That is because cooking denatures the proteins in the steak. Microwaving does the same thing to bread. It denatures (removes water) from the gluten and the rest of the bread absorbs the moisture. | |
| Nov 8, 2015 at 20:38 | history | asked | Level River St | CC BY-SA 3.0 |