Bread is often recommended to be eaten at most within a week after baking, since exposure to air and moisture would cause the growth of molds. If you plan on eating bread beyond a week, it is best to keep it sealed in an airtight container and refrigerated. However, that drastically reduces the freshness and taste, so it's best to eat it right away.
Although bread can be kept from spoiling by refrigerating it, I doubt it would last more than a couple weeks or even a month. So, to discover well-preserved residues of what seems to be bread or some kind of bread-like substance is quite a finding indeed.
That's what archaeologists working at the Cumra district of Konya, Catalhoyuk, in Türkiye found while they were excavating the area called "Space 66". From a Neolithic-era structure which resembled an oven, they found an artifact comprising traces of wheat, barley, and pea seeds.
Analysis of the spongy residue revealed that the substance might have been leavened bread which was left unbaked. Usually unbaked bread wouldn't even last for such a long time, but they found that the residue had fermented which preserved the starches.
Whether the specimen can actually be called bread is up for debate, since it's unbaked, and one can only speculate that the traces of ingredients found in it point to the substance having been in the process of becoming bread. Nevertheless, the researchers believe that there is a high possibility that the artifact is, in fact, bread, and they are considering it possibly the world's oldest piece of bread.
(Image credit: Murat Özsoy/Wikimedia Commons)