How long doPastrieslast in the pantry?

Why the freezer is not an option here

The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the answer comes from the pantry from the day of purchase figure: 5 days to 10 days. The source fills 2 of its fields outside the freezer here, and every one of them is printed below. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as pastry.

• In the freezernot recommended
• Unopened · in the pantry5 days to 10 days
• Once opened · in the fridge14 months

Turning the range into a date

Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 2 rows in all.

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by5 days to 10 days after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by14 months after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 5 days to 10 days in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Pastries, danish keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

The figure in the fridge once opened here is not settled by this record. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. 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 Pastries, danish past its 5 days to 10 days in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold takes the whole package out rather than the slice it grew on, and so does a musty or old-oil smell in a flour or a mix.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure 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?

Among the 52 items the USDA files under Baked Goods, this item ranks 22 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Cake, brownie, bread mixes holds 18 months, Cocoa and cocoa mixes holds 1 year. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 12% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items nearest it sit inside a band of 12 months to 1 year — a tight cluster, and this item at 14 months is inside it.

• Cocoa and cocoa mixeskeeps 1 year in the pantry once opened
• Garam masalakeeps 1 year in the pantry
• Fruit cakekeeps 6 months sealed in the pantryup to 12 months in the fridge once opened
• Flourkeeps 6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
• Frosting or icingkeeps 2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Gelatinkeeps 3 months in the pantry once openedflavored · up to 12 months sealed in the pantry

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 27 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening, and 7 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Chutney, Ketchup and Marinades, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is Chutney at 1 year.

• Chutney1 month in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Ketchup6 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Marinades6 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Pickles1 month in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Syrup6 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Tahini3 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Frosting or icing2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Salad dressings1 month in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Bakery shelf

Nothing else on the Bakery shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one. The other 15 products there run down from Fruit cake at 12 months to Macaroons at 2 days, and the ones nearest this product by window are Fruit cake, Cookies and Bread. That makes this page the top of its own shelf rather than a middle entry. Across the whole of Baked Goods the same product ranks 22 of 52. The middle of the shelf is Muffin, at 7 days. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Bakery inside Baked Goods.

• Fruit cake12 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Cookies3 months2 months sealed in the pantry
• Bread3 months2 months in the fridge
• Commercial bread products3 weeks14 days sealed in the pantry
• Commercial cakes and muffins10 days3 days sealed in the pantry
• Cheesecake7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies1 week1 day in the pantry
• Muffin7 days3 days in the pantry

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 14 months, Baked Goods offers 2 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Baking soda at 3 years against this one's 14 months, and the rest are Spice/spices. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 18 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Flavored or herb mixes and Cookies among them. The largest step the category offers is Spice/spices at 3 years.

• Baking soda3 years6 months in the pantry once opened
• Spice/spices3 years2 years in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 204 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 2 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. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap.

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: danish, Pastries, pastry

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.