Does Banana Bread Need To Be Refrigerated?

Do you have some bananas left over, then making delicious banana bread is the way to avoid them going to waste! Even though kids and adults love it, you can save some for later and have it ready when friends visit, snacks for lunch box, or picnic! If you have some leftovers or baked some extra loaves, how do you best store them? Does banana bread need to be refrigerated, and what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Banana bread is best eaten within a few days and should be stored cool on the countertop at normal room temperature, but if you cannot finish the bread you have baked, refrigerating it will make it last up to a week. If you have made some extra loaves, you can easily place them in the freezer for 3-4 months. 

Why should banana bread be stored in cool places, and when should you refrigerate or freeze your banana bread? We will tackle those questions and more in this article.

How Long Does Banana Bread Last?

Many variables can dictate how long banana bread will last. To know more about the methods of storing banana bread and its shelf life, you should check out our article How Long Does Banana Bread Last. However, this article will only briefly touch on the topic.

Banana bread is one of the more favorable bread for long storage. Because it has a lot of moisture from the banana, the bread loaf can stay fresh and edible for around 4-5 days if you store it cool. By cool we mean the normal room temperature, typically around 20°C (68 degrees Fahrenheit). If your kitchen or elsewhere where you store your banana bread is warmer than normal room temperature, your bread will go bad quick. To keep it fresh, then you should place it in the fridge. In the refrigerator, you can leave it for up to a week. 

Does Refrigerating Help?

Cooling or refrigerating your banana bread can keep it intact and safe for a more extended period. Specifically, banana bread can last up to one week in the refrigerator. While the fridge is convenient (as you can eat the banana bread loaf as desired), it does not have enough power to keep your food fresh for longer. Then freezing is the way.

Let’s talk about freezing. Freezing can store good-tasting banana bread for up to three months. However, banana bread stored at constant zero degrees Fahrenheit can retain an edible status for quite a while.

When Should I Freeze, Refrigerate, Or Store At Room Temperature My Banana Bread?

Does banana bread need to be refrigerated? Most of the time, yes, but not necessarily. There are some issues with all three forms of storing banana bread: freezing, refrigerating, and room temperature. We will tackle all of those issues below. 

There are appropriate times for specific storing methods. There are many things to consider when discussing which storage method to use. However, there is one that we have mentioned continuously in this article: the expected consumption time.

How Should I Store My Banana Bread (Based On Expected Time Of Consumption)

• Are you planning to finish the loaf in a day or two? Store it at room temperature (around 20°C – 68 degrees Fahrenheit). 
• Are you planning to eat the loaf for over a week? Store it in the fridge.
• Do you not know when you will be touching banana bread again? Store it in the freezer.

Things You Will Need To Consider Before Deciding on a Storing Medium

• Foil and zip locks are integral for storing banana bread in the freezer or the fridge. One does this process to avoid odors and flavors of other food sticking to your loaf.
• For freezing, you will need to defrost your loaf for a considerable amount of time before you can eat it.
• Room temperature storage is unpredictable and can introduce variables that may speed up spoiling. These variables are changes in temperature, humidity changes, microbial exposure, etc.
• Storing banana bread through refrigeration allows you to eat the said banana bread on demand. Because refrigeration does not freeze or harden your bread, most of the time, defrosting is not needed. 
• Due to chemical reactions, frozen bread can taste better than refrigerated bread (explained in-depth later).

What Happens When I Refrigerate My Banana Bread?

Back in the olden days, there used to be a presence of counters and boxes filled with bread called bread boxes. Today, most bread boxes are only present in bakers, enabling bakers to store their bread at room temperature for an extended period, protected from the elements that may induce spoiling (or hasten it). However, since Fred Wolf introduced the modern refrigerator, refrigeration has gotten more and more traction, and today, almost all households have them. An epiphany then rises: is an environment as cool as a refrigerator good for your banana bread?

The Bread Science Of Refrigerated Bread

Storing your banana bread in the refrigerator can help make it stay edible and safe to eat for extended periods, but there can be compromises regarding the taste. As to why that is, let us understand it through bread science. (Alpers, Thekla, et al., 2021)

Why Does Bread Taste Different After Being Refrigerated?

1. The dough used in banana bread contains starch, which in its primitive form, takes the form of a crystalline. The crystalline structures in starch arrange themselves in a rigid pattern. 
2. When one makes dough, the starch absorbs the water. This absorption results in crystalline structures turning amorphous. What amorphous means is that the crystalline forms are now less defined and are not as rigid as before.
3. As the banana bread dough gets heated, the crystalline structures further break down.
4. After baking, the temperature cools down, and the crystalline structures try to reshape into a more rigid form. This process is also called “retrogradation.”
5. Retrogradation is the primary reason banana bread stales, meaning dries out and gets hardened. While staling is normal, even at room temperature, problems arise regarding refrigeration.
6. Refrigeration speeds this process up, especially for temperatures below 68 degrees Fahrenheit but above 32 degrees Fahrenheit (above freezing).
7. On the other hand, freezing slows the crystallization process down by a significant margin. As such, we can imply that banana bread stales faster in the fridge than in the freezer.

Is Refrigerated Banana Bread Bad For Your Health?

Considering the convenience of the fridge, we tend to rely on it overly. We use it for the food we will finish later, even though it’s not always necessary. As such, is refrigerating banana bread unhealthy?

Refrigerated banana bread is not harmful to your health; it is usually not unhealthy (unless exposed to potentially dangerous elements such as rotting food). However, compared to freshly baked banana bread, refrigerated banana bread is less healthy, as it loses nutrients. 

“During the process of refrigeration and storage, there is a loss of essential nutrients, as well as some loss of color, flavor, and texture,” says Pooja Malhotra, a nutritionist in Delhi. However, refrigeration prolongs the shelf life of the food, so we don’t have much choice but to refrigerate food. Another thing to note is that frigid temperatures can cause freeze injury and result in the loss of food texture.” (source)

How Does Refrigerating Delay Banana Bread Spoiling?

Food waste in the United States is a big concern. According to the numbers produced by the US Department of Agriculture, 40 percent of all American food is food waste! This number means that many producers and consumers will throw as much as half of our food away. This is food that impoverished families and starving citizens could have eaten. Furthermore, according to the USDA, food spoilage is the leading cause of this food waste. (source) 

That is a shocking number! Have you ever considered how you contribute to this? What we can imply from food spoilage being the leading cause of food waste is that much of the food waste is preventable. Collectively, we could assess and find solutions to reduce it. At home, we can already employ such a method: refrigeration. So how does refrigeration slow down spoiling?

A Quick History On Refrigeration

Refrigerating our food as a means to preserve them may seem like an idea right out of the industrial era of the technological revolution. Still, the truth is the very thought of cooling our food to preserve said food originated from the prehistoric period. However, humans before did it differently, as prehistoric human civilizations covered their hunted meat with snow and ice. For an even more robust refrigeration system, they dug their meat and stored them underground, where the thick ground layer protected it from direct sunlight. (source)

The Prehistoric Period

The very action of freezing food to preserve it extends far from prehistoric periods. More recent recordings proved that humans kept their food through ice boxes without refrigerators. Ice boxes were a unique gadget similar to today’s refrigerators, but they could not cool the food themselves. Instead, there was an ice delivery truck every day, where people would purchase ice for their ice boxes, delivered to homes in large half-meter chunks. 

However, the first electric refrigerator for domestic use was invented in 1913 by American Fred W. Wolf and was known as the Domelre or the DOMestic ELectric REfrigerator. Unfortunately for Wolf, his model was a failure, but one of his innovations, the ice cube tray, became popular and was incorporated into competitors’ models. (source)

How Refrigeration Works

As to how refrigeration slows down spoiling, it all has to do with the microorganisms responsible for the spoilage of banana bread. It can manifest in different forms, but it mainly involves bacteria and fungi (specifically a particular class of fungi called molds). These microorganisms struggle to cultivate a colony under cold conditions as they slow down significantly.

Some microorganisms do not survive at all in freezing conditions. This feature is why sometimes, food can stay indefinitely edible as long as they are permanently frozen. However, aside from freezing, there are other forms of preservation, such as salting, as salt can prevent microorganisms from growing, creating a hostile environment for them. 

Signs Of A Staling Banana Bread

Staling and eventually spoiling is a natural process for most food products, including banana bread. However, how does one know if banana bread is stale or spoiled?

Is My Banana Bread Stale Or Spoiled?

• One of the tell-tale signs of whether banana bread is turning stale is to check how hard it is. As explained earlier, crystalline structures slowly harden and form rigid structures as it cools. As such, the longer banana bread stays at cooler temperatures (even at room temperature), it sets and stales.
• Checking the texture and the taste is also a fool-proof way to check whether banana bread is stale. While the smell might not be affected, there will be a change in taste and texture. Do note that stale bread, most of the time, is still edible.
• Checking for molds is the easiest way to know if your banana bread is spoiled. Molds indicate that strong microorganism colonies are already living in your banana bread. These colonies also affect how banana bread smells and tastes.

Summary

So, does banana bread need to be refrigerated? Unless you plan to eat your banana bread for the next 24 to 48 hours, you can keep it cool at normal room temperature. If you want to keep it longer, banana bread does need to be refrigerated.

However, there are some considerations you might need to know. For example, freezing your bread needs defrosting but can make your banana bread last longer. On the other hand, refrigerating your banana bread makes it more convenient, yet at the same time, your bread may be less tasty.

Banana bread is affected by the chemical reactions in the dough. Initially, the flour used in the dough has rigid crystalline structures; as it turns into the dough and is baked, the crystalline structures mix and mash. After cooling down, it forms a wooden structure again, inducing staling.

Freezing and cooling prevent food from spoiling, creating a hostile environment for microorganisms that induce the spoiling process. On the other hand, when your banana bread hardens and has a change in taste, it has gone stale. If it has molded, it is unedible and spoiled.