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So, yesterday I forgot bread loaves on a table and in the evening found tiny red ants crawling on the loaves all over.

I tried to dust them off, but some of them went into hiding in pits of the bread.

Is there some practical method to get the ants out of the bread loaves?

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    Extra protein, more nutritious... :-)
    – sdg
    Dec 7, 2011 at 1:27

2 Answers 2

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One of the best ways I've found to remove ants from the bread is to put it into the oven at a light temperature. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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  • You said: Out of the frying pan and into the fire. What does that mean? What has that to do with oven? Dec 13, 2011 at 3:22
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    @AnishaKaul: It's a North American expression, although it does seem oddly out of context here.
    – Aaronut
    Dec 21, 2011 at 16:53
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    Sorry the expression in this context is that. The ants will leave the bread if there is heat and die in the oven. So it should be out of the bread and into the oven if you will. This is an old trick I used to use in Africa after buying my baguettes from a street merchant.
    – Tolure
    Mar 28, 2013 at 21:27
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I assume that this is a bread loaf with one side cut open and in addition, you dusted off all ants that you could see from outside. Ants cannot go too far into a bread loaf through the open end. You can cut another piece off from the open end and use the remaining loaf. (If you do not mind using the piece where ants were, then you could remove the ants easily from the cut piece now. I would not mind eating it as this is what typically happens in tropical regions.)

As a solution to not letting ants get on the bread in the first place,
(1) you could place it in a plastic bag and form a knot so that ants cannot get through. or
(2) Place the bread on top of a cylindrical object (for example, a used powdered milk container) and place the object (and the bread) in a (big enough) bowl (a wok) with water. Make sure that no parts of the cylindrical object are touching the lateral surface of the bowl.

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