Bread Mold

[Catharine McPherson]

Hello,

 

My name is Gwyneth and I live south of Vancouver B.C., just north of
Washington State.

 I am in Grade 6 and preparing my Science Fair project on some bread mold I
am testing. I thought that organic bread would grow more mold than non
organic bread and grow mold sooner. I decided to bake my own bread by using
the same ingredients except for the flour. One recipe I used organic all
purpose flour and in the other I used regular all purpose flour.

I then cut equal sized samples and placed one of each in different areas
around my house:

The windowsill, the bathroom, the refrigerator, on top of the refrigerator
and under a dark cabinet in an envelope away from a heat source.

I checked on all of my samples for over 20 days and found that the non
organic bread grew slightly more mold and grew it faster than the organic
samples. I was surprised since I thought the organic sample would do this
first.

The second thing I did was test the two flours just mixed with water and the
results were the other way around where the organic sample grew mold first.
However, the non organic mold seemed to spread much more and produce more
results than the organic.

 

Now I am perplexed as to why I got two different results.

 

I tested the ph and both seem to be the same.

Ideas?

 

Thanks

Gwyneth

P.S. my science fair is on Saturday but if you can't get back to me before
than that is alright.

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[Horner-2]

Hi Gwyneth,

That's a really interesting experiment you came up with there.

The two flours may have had other differences other than just just
whether they were grown organically or not. For example, the flours
could have been grown in different locations that had different climate
and different minerals in the soil. They could have be produced from
different varieties of wheat. They may have been stored for varying
times before you bought them in the shop. All these things would result
in flour with different amounts of nutrients in, this could explain the
different growth rates of your mold.



Hope this helps,

Neil

Catharine McPherson wrote:

> Hello,
>
>  
>
> My name is Gwyneth and I live south of Vancouver B.C., just north of
> Washington State.
>
>  I am in Grade 6 and preparing my Science Fair project on some bread mold I
> am testing. I thought that organic bread would grow more mold than non
> organic bread and grow mold sooner. I decided to bake my own bread by using
> the same ingredients except for the flour. One recipe I used organic all
> purpose flour and in the other I used regular all purpose flour.
>
> I then cut equal sized samples and placed one of each in different areas
> around my house:
>
> The windowsill, the bathroom, the refrigerator, on top of the refrigerator
> and under a dark cabinet in an envelope away from a heat source.
>
> I checked on all of my samples for over 20 days and found that the non
> organic bread grew slightly more mold and grew it faster than the organic
> samples. I was surprised since I thought the organic sample would do this
> first.
>
> The second thing I did was test the two flours just mixed with water and the
> results were the other way around where the organic sample grew mold first.
> However, the non organic mold seemed to spread much more and produce more
> results than the organic.
>
>  
>
> Now I am perplexed as to why I got two different results.
>
>  
>
> I tested the ph and both seem to be the same.
>
> Ideas?
>
>  
>
> Thanks
>
> Gwyneth
>
> P.S. my science fair is on Saturday but if you can't get back to me before
> than that is alright.
>

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Mycology@...
http://www.bio.net/biomail/listinfo/mycology