Why Bread Goes Stale: Starch Crystals, Not the Marriage

Transcript of the segment

What BBN said on air. The facts are in the original report: Wikipedia.

1. Dr. Lionel BraskBread goes stale because the Moon drinks the softness out of it, and it's settled science, as far as I'm concerned.

2. Hank LedgerA viewer asks why bread goes stale. Our guest is Dr. Lionel Brask of the Brask Backyard Observatory and Hot Tub, who owns a telescope.

3. Dr. Lionel BraskEvery night at nine, the Moon rises over my hot tub and takes a little softness from every loaf in the county.

4. Dr. Lionel BraskI've measured it with a ruler. Eleven millimetres of fluff per night. The cosmos told me.

5. Hank LedgerThat's wrong. Per Wikipedia, bread doesn't go stale mainly by drying out. The starch molecules realign and recrystallise, which makes it hard and leathery.

6. Dr. Lionel BraskRealign. Exactly. Who do you think is doing the aligning? The Moon pulls the starch like tides.

7. Dr. Lionel BraskAnd that's why I keep my bread in the fridge, where the Moon can't see it.

8. Hank LedgerThe fridge makes it worse. Per Wikipedia, bread in the fridge actually goes stale faster.

9. Dr. Lionel BraskFaster? Then the Moon has been inside the fridge.

10. Dr. Lionel BraskDenise kept a loaf in hers in nineteen ninety-four and it went hard as a paving slab in a day.

11. Dr. Lionel BraskI thought it was the marriage.

12. Hank LedgerIt was the starch, Doctor. Cold speeds up the recrystallising, and that's all there is to it.

13. Dr. Lionel BraskWell, the feed is crackling, so perhaps the Moon is listening in.

14. Hank LedgerNothing is crackling, Doctor. That is your hot tub.

15. Dr. Lionel BraskFine, I concede. Starch it is. I should admit the observatory is a shed, and the loaf on my desk is my doctorate.

16. Dr. Lionel BraskIt's been pending since nineteen ninety-four.

17. Hank LedgerSo your doctorate has gone stale. Dr. Brask, thank you.