Giant Microwave Can Help Bread Last For 60 Days

While most of us just buy loaves of bread and stick them in the fridge or freezer until it's time to toast them and/or toss them, it seems like worrying about bread going stale might not be a problem anymore.

A company called Microzap claims that their giant microwave can zap a loaf of bread and make it last for 60 days without going stale. "We treated a slice of bread in the device, and we then checked the mold that was in the bread over time against a control," chief executive Don Stull told BBC. "And at 60 days it had the same mold content as it had when it came out of the oven."

Normally, bread will grow mold in around 10 days, the BBC reports; extending the shelf life of bread could cut food waste, and the microwave technique allows bakers to skip the preservatives and other additives that fight mold in everyday bread.

Stull says the microwave device, which introduces frequencies through a slotted radiator, unlike a home microwave, was designed to kill bacteria like salmonella, but it can also kill mold spores in bread in around 10 seconds. And while making French toast with stale brioche might be a technique of the past, something is a little weird about bread that can stay on a shelf for that long. It's like Wonderbread, or Twinkies.