of potentially toxic molds, especially blue-
green species of Aspergillus and Penicillium,
gray-white Mucor species, and red Monilia
sitophila.
The Virtues of Stale Bread
Cooks have long known that stale bread is
a very useful ingredient in its own right. It
is more robust than fresh bread, and retains
its sponge-like structure in wet
preparations that would cause fresh bread
to disintegrate, such dishes as bread salads,
bread puddings, and pain perdu. Similarly,
bread crumbs retain their individual
identity when wetted, and can serve as
tender binding agent in stuffings, panades,
and breadings for frying. The source of dry
bread’s structural integrity is its starch.
When it retrogrades, it forms some regions
that are extremely ordered and stable and
that hold the rest of the starch network
strongly together (p. 458).