You got lucky dumpster diving, Doris?? lol I'd give the bread to the birds, slim pickings for them with all the snow and ice on the ground.

As mainly carbs, starch, etc., I'd assume the bugs will find mostly carbon in white bread. Its a brown.

John

Here is a link that might be useful: starch

Maryann! If you only knew, 16 pounds of strawberries, two HUGE piles of nanas, bunch of bags of salad. twenty or thirty spoiled bouquets of flowers. Three orchid plants (in ceramic pots) Three Hyacinth bulbs and maybe half a dozen mini daffofil bulbs. All in Nice pots. I found a place that carts their discarded produce to the dumpster in shopping carts, wrapped in clear plastic bags of course. The dumpster is hidden, and no real diving required.

It made me realize that all this fuss about buying the canvas bags instead of using the plastic bags is BOGUS. They make money selling the canvas bags and throw thousands OF POUNDS of food and non-biodegradeables away. And this is a SMALL store, not even a jewel or a costco.

Its a brain fart when you multiply that by thousands and thousands of stores. Those plastic bags are NOTHING.

Oh and BTW, thanks for the opinion on the bread. Some will definitely go to the birdies. The rest I need to offset the 20 or 30 pounds of frozen bananas sitting in my car trunk at the moment.

That depends on whether what you have is Wonder Bread or a good wholesome whole wheat bread. The typical bakery white, "enriched" flour bread is all celulose and you will need to add lots of a Nitrogen source for the good bacteria to digest it, while a good, whole wheat bread, full of good nutrition will not.

Hi Kim!

They are sourdough baguettes. Not exactly wonderbread but nowhere near whole wheat either.

:)

"The typical bakery white, "enriched" flour bread is all celulose"

I may be mistaken, but I think you have that backward.

As I recall, cellulose comes from the cell walls, which are the parts that are stripped off the wheat to make white flour. If you look at the nutritional information on a bag of white bread, you'll see that it has 0 dietary fiber.

Not all fiber is cellulose, but all cellulose is fiber, so if you have 0 fiber, there is no way that you have any cellulose.

White flour is made by stripping the outside layer from the wheat before grinding it, then artificially adding back the vitamins and minerals that were stripped away with the outer coating. Most of what is lost in the process is the cellulose, although white flour is a little lower in protein than whole wheat flour (about 11% versus about 13%).

I think that both white and whole wheat breads would be considered high enough in protein to be considered greens in the compost.

According to the Wonder Bread Canada website, there is no difference between their Wonder+ Enriched White Bread or their Wonder+ 100% Whole Wheat Bread. Both have 6 grams of protein and 29 grams of carbohydrates in a 63 gram serving. (In western Canada)

I've never put that kind of volume of bread into a pile, but then I've never done 20-30 pounds of bananas either. If I had to dispose of these volumes, I would make sure I had a large, hot pile to do it in and mix thoroughly.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: Wonder Bread

Lloyd--thanks for the link. I think Wonder sells different products in the US from what they sell in Canada.

Wonder markets more types of bread in the US than in Canada, and the nutritional information on the .com site is not as complete as what is on the .ca site.

The Wonder+Enriched may be similar to Wonder Kids or Whole Grain White in the US. The Wonder Classic has less protein than the other products (2 g per slice for Wonder Classic vs 3 g per slice for other products).

Thx bp. So now how does one figure out N in that protein? Is it a one for one? Without thinking I took 29 grams of C against the 6 grams of protein and came up with a 5:1 ration of C:N showing it as a strong green but now I wonder. (pun intended)

Lloyd

I compost stale bread with no issues.(also donuts, cakes and pies leftovers) Composting isn't supposed to be complicated. Keep the proper moisture level and add stuff that will rot. If it is wet or stinky add dry carbon material. If it is to dry add wet material and or moisture.

BTW I consider bread a green. It is a green that is good to add if the pile is a little too damp.

Two rules of thumb I go by are: protein=nitrogen='green', and, if it stinks after it's been kept wet in a bag for a few days it's a green. Are these rules too general to be useful, I wonder.

Whole Grain White? We can get flour like that in the store here - kind of off-white.

By the way, are you trying to lure a certain person to the forum (if she isn't back already) with this talk of bread on the compost pile? Nothing is more abhorrent to her than soggy bread, even the mention of the possibility of it. Me, it makes nostalgic.

Nostalgic for that poster's posts, that is.

Me too, Paul. Me too. :)

Hey, maybe we should start a thread titled "The Joy of Composting With Bread" to bring her back?

All the best,
-Patrick
(Canucks and Mainers, we stick side by each, eh? Ayup, ayup.)

UNCLE! UNCLE!

Doris, I've got your number, I think. You dunk your donuts in your coffee, don't you? And that's all right. It's no one else's business, because I assume you do that when you're alone, when no others' sensibilities could be offended.

But c'mon man! Composting takes place outdoors! You do realize other people---innocent people---could happen upon your pile? Your pile with---I've done some quick computations---a 3:5 ratio of DS:C*.

Doris, do you have children? Have you thought about what might happen if they have their friends over? You know kids. Pretty soon, it's all over the neighborhood. "Doris L. composts bread. Seriously. She's got a whole wad of white sour sog out in her backyard."

No one's going to let their kids play at your house. I certainly wouldn't.

Maybe you don't have children, but you have friends, don't you? What if while you're hiding in the bathroom, considerately out of sight, dipping a hunk of processed wheat into a cup of liquid, and your breakfast guest decides to help you out by taking their grapefruit half out to the pile? Can you possibly imagine their shock? Their disgust? You'll probably come out of the bathroom and find them gone.

But people don't keep that kind of thing to themselves. You'll be in the supermarket, hear some whispering and turn to find two women behind you studiously examining a Vidalia onion, and when you turn back around, you'll hear their nervous giggling. Face them again. There's not an onion in the whole world deserving of that kind of inspection. The whole town probably knows what goes on in your back yard.

Maybe your husband does it, too, but people won't blame him; they'll blame you. They'll think, "Well, he's a man. He probably doesn't even know what his wife puts on the pile."

Anyway, I'm sure you're not a bad person. You're just ignorant. Or gross. Maybe you forgot that there's moisture in the world just sitting around waiting for something bready to sog up.

Maybe it's not too late? I kept gagging every time I read the thread title (at first I thought it was a joke) and I couldn't get myself to read the thread for the longest time, but then I thought, "No one else is going to say anything to her, I bet. As always, it falls on me."

Anyway, Doris, if it isn't too late, I'd return those baguettes to where I found them. If you've already committed them to your compost, I would wear something I can afford to throw away, wrap several layers of plastic around my hands, and the blade of my shovel, wait until nightfall (It's too bad the eclipse is over.) and scrape up as much of the puffed up sog as you can possibly remove. Double bag it and put it in your garage until you can get it to the landfill. You Do Not Want to wake up tomorrow to find that some hyena or other lower life form got into it during the night and scatttered it all over your neighborhood for everyone to see how you live.

* Disgusting Sog:compost

Welcome back, Annpat. :)

cheers,
-sbt

so the gushy bananas dont bother ya?

hee!

Its all sitting there in the yardwaste bucket waiting to be ALL SQUASHED AND SOGGED UP!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH

All right, Doris. Okay. But it takes a good friend to tell you what everyone else is already thinking.

Do I know you, sbt?

"Anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me"

L8r, sk8r. :)

All the best,
-Patrick

Okay now I am completely satisfied, perhaps even eating a chocolate cigarette.

Have you got one for me, paul?

eh it'll give the neighbors something to talk about besides the umpteen dozen carloads of leaves/grass that I brought in last fall.

hee!

(Canucks and Mainers, we stick side by each, eh? Ayup, ayup.)

Stephen King was honoured last year by Canadian booksellers. In his acceptance speech he said Maine ought by rights to be Canada's eleventh province. I report this here because if Stephen King were to compost two dozen loaves of stale bread in the Bangor Gothic compost pile I imagine he keeps in his backyard, the experience would surely give him enough material to write another novel, or so I imagine annpat would imagine.

It is good to see you here annpat and Patrick.

My mother used to steal apples off the apple trees from the yard surrounding the house that King owns now in Bangor. She grew up on the next block. The wrought iron fence that surrounds his lot has a spider and web worked into the gate. Oh! Oh! I know something I've been dying to tell you, Paul! Miss Ellie bought a camp on my (dead-end) road! It's 3/4 of a mile past mine. And her new dive is one of your old haunts---Dysart's!!

Anyway, can you believe this Doris? Wearing her shame like a badge of honor.

The horror! The horror!

Paul, if we let Maine into Confederation, will we have to revise Canajun organic certification to include a "no bread in compost" rule? The prairie provinces would likely go wild.

All the best,
-Patrick
(who met Miss Ellie last fall, but not in Maine)

Steve outta stop by, I got three more bags of bread this weekend. hee! I left the baguettes tho, and snagged the sliced breads, parker rolls, some other poofy kind of rolls, english muffins, british muffins, sprouted bread and couple kinds of bakery deserts.

Wanna come over? Its raining today, lots of soggy bread.

bwahahahahahahahahahah

How do we report a trouble maker, Patrick? Do you know?
Someone please tell Doris how much planarians like bread.
First let me go find a picture so Doris understands what she's attracting.

Here Doris, expect to see lots of these hanging out at your place.

Here is a link that might be useful: Planarian on a Piece of Bread

Land planarians devour earthworms, slugs, insect larvae, and are cannibalistic

Anybody who eats slugs is a friend of mine. Doesnt say anything about making sammiches out of them tho.

:@)

They dont scare me, I dont have a greenhouse and its fixing to be 20 degrees this weekend.

ann, it's time to use reverse psychology on our recalcitrant Doris - whatever 'reverse' might be - you'll think of something. Take some Gravol before you do.

(Doris, you're holding up very well)

Miss Ellie as a neighbour - how great for you! Witty, sensible, lovely - of course she would like Dysart's.

A picture of a big Dysart's biscuit flanked by pots of jam and peanut butter - that would make a fine screen saver.

The maple sap is running here.

is you getting a tummy ache?
Since the 50's, Canadians have trusted GRAVOL* to prevent and relieve nausea, vomiting and dizziness no matter what the cause of these symptoms.

Yes, Doris, I am. And it's not just me; you're making all of us sick.

Doris, civilized people have known since the 1950s that you don't put bready products in the compost pile. And actually, it's not the rats, and it's not the planarians; it's the gross out factor. And don't jump down my throat, I'm not saying that you're not civilized (Or clean.); No, I'm guessing that you're really young, or maybe you live alone and you've kind of let things slide 'cause you have no one to impress? Don't comb your hair anymore? Don't care what people think about you or your yard anymore? Do you find yourself drinking milk that's been left out for a few days?

Doris (May I call you Doris?), I'd like to help you. But it starts with you recognizing that you need help. You seem a little resistant. I'd like you to try an experiment. Put a piece of bread (or cereal or baguette or roll) in a dish containing water. (The water represents moisture in the atmosphere.) Wait 15 minutes. Look into the bowl.

I think that'll take care of it.

Nope, but I will soak it in some leftover coffee with cream and sugar thats been sitting on the table for a couple days and dump THAT whole mess in the pile!

Dang baquettes must be made of wax, they're so leathery I cant even get them to soak up water. Had to pour "something else" on them.... hee!

Bread is a green. I am sure I learned that on this forum. There was an extensive discussion and the conclusion was that bread and cereals are greens.

I wasn't going to post on this controversial topic, but I was concerned that Doris was going to too much green and her pile will turn into a sticky mess. You should get more browns to balance out your bread and bananas.

Not that I would condone composting bread or anything.

But what happens in my backyard, stays in my backyard.

I missed you too, Annp. Whenever anyone mentioned bread in their compost pile I almost berated them in your memory, but kept hoping you would show up and save me from the duty.

My cheeks hurt from grinning too hard.

-L

OH! That's a sweet welcome.
So, there's people here you just let go unguided?
No, I won't yell at you, it's so nice to see you again.

Joe, dont worry, there's tons of paper and straw and cardboard and the paper wrappers from the baguettes in there. The nanas and bread arent the only components, lots and lots of variety in there. There are also many bags of leaves in the pile. I was probably pretty heavy on the browns before this whole thing. I have lots more shredded paper, cardboard and straw on hand in case it gets oogy in there. Ive also got a pile of woodchips from a dead elm tree (cept they're pretty wet with the snow.

:)