How long doCroutonslast in the fridge?

The freezer helps less here than you would expect

The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 2 times what the refrigerator gives, 6 months against 12 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. The source also indexes it as bread.

• In the freezer11 months to 12 months
• In the pantry5 months to 6 months
• In the fridge5 months to 6 months

Turning the range into a date

Counting 6 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.

• In the freezerUse by11 months to 12 months after the day you stored it
• In the pantryUse by5 months to 6 months after the day you stored it
• In the fridgeUse by5 months to 6 months after the day you stored it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 5 months to 6 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Croutons is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Croutons past its 5 months to 6 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A rancid, paint-like smell in a nut, an oil or a seed, mold around the neck of a bottle, or a swollen can mean it goes out whatever the date says.

The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

7 items in the Shelf Stable Foods list keep exactly as long as this item, 6 months, so they all share place 56 of 70 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 84% of them.

Items that behave the same way

All 5 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 6 months, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.

• Fruits, dried, raisins, apricots, mangoes, cranberries, etc.keeps exactly as long
• Cashews, no shellkeeps exactly as long
• Roasted red peppers, jarkeeps exactly as long
• Pumpkin seedskeeps exactly as long
• Instant breakfast drinks, bottledkeeps exactly as long
• Marshmallow crèmekeeps 1 month in the pantry once openedup to 5 months sealed in the pantry

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 3 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, pantry and refrigerator: Pine nuts, Mung bean and Whole wheat flour. That is 3 products out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the 3 shown, 2 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Whole wheat flour at 2 years.

• Pine nuts3 months in the fridge
• Mung bean1 year in the fridgedry, food-grade bags
• Whole wheat flour2 years in the fridge

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Pumpkin seeds6 months in the fridgeraw, no shell
• Pecans9 months sealed in the fridgeno shell
• Applesauce7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial · up to 18 months sealed in the pantry
• "Genuine" Maple syrup2 years in the pantryunopened, plastic
• Roasted red peppers4 months in the fridge

The rest of the Shelf Stable Foods shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Shelf Stable Foods shelf together with 69 others, and 55 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Coconut cream at 5 years down to Polenta at 7 days. Nearest this product by window are Fruits, dried, Cashews and Roasted red peppers, which is the order the list below is printed in. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so this item sits here at 6 months rather than at the 5 months in the fridge its own answer prints.

• Fruits, dried6 months6 months in the fridge once opened
• Cashews6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Roasted red peppers6 months4 months in the fridge
• Pumpkin seeds6 months6 months in the fridge
• Breadcrumbs6 months6 months in the pantry
• Instant breakfast drinks6 months6 months in the pantry
• Marshmallow crème5 months1 month in the pantry once opened
• Crackers8 months3 months in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 6 months, the Shelf Stable Foods aisle gives 47 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cereal at 12 months against this one's 6 months; after it come Toaster pastries, Macadamias and Peanuts. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 6 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Cashew butter and Pine nuts among them. The largest step the category offers is Sesame seeds at 5 years.

• Cereal12 months2 months in the pantry once opened
• Toaster pastries12 months1 week in the pantry once opened
• Macadamias12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
• Peanuts12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
• Pistachios12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
• Walnuts12 months9 months sealed in the fridge
• Dry stuffing mix12 months9 months in the pantry
• Sunflower seeds12 months7 months in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 682 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. The same record answers to bread in the source's own index. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: bread, crouton

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.