Don’t you just love the taste, smell, and feel of warm, fresh out-of-the oven bread? It is so incredibly good. The temptation is to savor it as soon as it is cool enough to touch. But wait! Most bread-making instructions suggest a 30-minute cool down time to let the proteins and starches set up so they are firm enough to hold their shape. Too-warm bread squashes into dough balls. So there is an optimum time when bread is the definition of perfection. Typically bread bakeries begin work very early in the morning to have the bread ready for early shoppers and for eating that day.
By the next day the bread is on the day-old bread shelf and sells for a fraction of the price it did before. Why? Simple. It has lost its freshness. The bread is now stale. So what has happened? Though I have not found anybody who is certain about the details of the process of staling, we can all tell that it has happened. While the bread is still nutritious and will still drive away hunger, it just isn’t what it used to be.
Surprisingly, breads lose freshness faster in a refrigerator than at room temperature. What we do know is that getting stale involves continuing changes in starch chemistry. In fresh bread, starch is hydrated, bound to water in some special way, making the texture just right. Some say that this “just right” condition vanishes as water leaves the starch granules and moves into the open spaces of the bread. Mind you, this is different than bread drying out-it is bread getting stale. With water in the wrong place, the texture changes to chewier and tougher.
Stale bread was an important player in the successful ruse that the gang from Gibeon foisted on Joshua. What they gained by deception backfired, and the Gibeonites were relegated to woodcutters and water carriers. Stale bread also reminds us to share God’s fresh bountiful blessings every day while they are still new. Storing, hoarding, selfishly saving, only to become stale, is antithetical to Christian living.
Bread of life, I prize the aroma, the taste, and the texture of Your living Word as it reads fresh in my mind every morning. Lead me to someone today who not only hungers for the fresh bread of life but also longs for the freshness of Your good news.