Bread preservation technique: cinnamon essential oil

image: wikipedia

Cinnamon is one of my favorite spices. It's aromatic and adds a lot of flavor to many different recipes. Whenever I smell cinnamon, there is a hint of nostalgia, reminding me of my mother making me cinnamon and sugar toasted bread. A simple recipe, but as a kid, I really loved it.

The nice thing about cinnamon is that there are a variety of uses for it besides in standard baking. In medicine, cinnamon has shown to be an effective treatment for diabetes II, as well as for common colds, toothaches, and halitosis. Cinnamon is also used in insect repellents. Since cinnamon oil has high anti-microbial properties, studies are looking into the preservative effects of it on different foods.

An interesting article came out about the use of cinnamon oil as a way to preserve bread and other gourmet baked items. In Spain, researchers studied packaging of paraffin wax paper with different concentrations of cinnamon essential oil. Observing both white bread with a common mold in plain wax packaging and the paraffin wax paper with cinnamon essential oil, they found the packaging with 6% cinnamon essential oil prevented mold growth by 96% after only three days and lasted up to ten days. The bread in plain wax packaging did not inhibit mold growth.

This is significant for any of you who are tired of having to throw away a half or more loaf of bread due to moldiness. I can't tell you how many partially eaten loaves of bread I've had to throw away due to this. I now keep my bread in the fridge which does make it last longer. I just don't understand why there can't be half loaves of bread? For single people like me or people who just don't eat bread quickly, this would seem like such a viable option and less waste. I know I could just not buy bread, but honestly, I'm a huge bread lover. And why deprive myself of that?