Why is American bread so expensive and tasteless?

White sandwich bread in America is basically under-sugared cake.

Ugh!

The USA can do many things well, but bakeries/bread and regular coffee aren't two of these.

The reason that we have bad bread is because it is considered upper class. The perception has been the more "refined" something is, the more upper class it is. Take Wonder Bread for example. The original reason that it was a "wonder" was that it was so light, airy, and soft (hence the balloons on the packaging). Much like American Cheese, this is what Americans have been taught makes us superior to others. Coarse brown bread is for poor people and foreigners. When I was growing up in the 1960s, I was often called poor because our family used brown Roman Meal bread, which to be honest was hardly better than Wonder Bread.

Thanks r2. American “cheese” is called processed/fake cheese elsewhere.

I think where you live makes a difference. Northeastern cities still have small bakeries that produce very good bread to be had at delis, butchers and supermarkets.

^^ and is not overly expensive

My city (in Ohio) has excellent bakeries, but almost no one here buys bread from a bakery. My family has German origins, so I grew up eating rye bread as my primary type of bread instead of Wonder Bread. Now, I only rare eat any kind of bread (avoiding carbohydrates).

The 60s did a bad number on many food "items" (food became industrial product). You can blame our huge land-grant universities with "Food Science" programmes where they invented all this Frankenfood for the corporate overlords.

Because bread in supermarkets are created to have long self life and appeal to the broadest range of consumers, so you have bland white. bread. It is marked up for the maximum profit.

OMG The best bread I have ever had, I got from Balducci's mail order around 18 years ago! Manoucher Bread! Damn, it still exists, but there seems to be non way to get it in America.

The best thing I have EVER eaten.

Depends on where you live. In NYC, I get great fresh bread from a French bakery around the corner. Having worked with Wonder bread and understanding the chemicals they put in to preserve and keeps its whiteness and softnes, I realized that the extra money for real bread is worth it.

I saw a program on TV recently about how store-bought bread is made that surprised the hell out of me. You know how bakery bread is made out of pliable dough? "Supermarket bread" is actually made of batter, like a cake. This is why it's light and airy—not at all something that bread should be.

Cak with no flava or graxy?

Batter breads are an old tradition and needn't be nasty. My grandmother baked all sorts of batter breads.

Dear HARPO Staff:

BREAD is the staff of life. I can easily replace each of you.

I didn’t know bread could be made from a batter. Bread comes from dough. Y’all are being scammed.

It depends on where you live in the US. In the NYC metro area, there are a bazillion bakeries and food places where you can get good quality bread. I buy it at Orwasher’s bakery. Yeah, it costs, but we don’t eat much bread anyway.

And you can make your own, too.

My Mom would get a loaf of Italian bread from a local Italian bakery several days a week. Unfortunately, you cannot get a good loaf of Italian bread outside bakeries in NYC, Philly, SF, or Boston.

I found a bakery in a nearby town that bakes wonderful ryes, dinner rolls, and a 6 grain variety. I stopped buying the Whole Wheat loaf from the supermarket. It's tasteless compared to the loaves from a bakery.

I haven’t heard of Roman Meal bread in forever. My grandma used to buy it and it was heavily advertised on TV back in the 70s. The white bread we used was called Rainbo which was like Wonder but not as spongy. But that may have been because mom bought it at the “day old bread” bakery thrift store.

For a long time in history, white bread was actually the healthier bread in that the same process that stripped the wheat of its nutrients also stripped it of fungus and bacteria. So while white bread was basically empty calories, it was less likely to make you sick. Once we figured out how to make darker breads safer, of course those became the healthier options. But in the US white bread was still widely popular, especially as the balance or alternative to all those spicy ethnic foods immigrants were bringing in. The US government and later the WWII allies funded companies to enrich white bread to get more vitamins and nutrients to soldiers and the general population.

I just want to know why bread seems so damn expensive, it's just water, flour, yeast, and bake.

Where are you from OP? I live in flyover country and there are two local grocery stores that bake their own bread. The bread is great and not that expensive. I don't think that is so unusual. These are independent grocery stores. i grew up in NJ and occasionally stopped by the Italian bakery on the way home to pick up a loaf of bread. For,what it's worth Italian bread when I was 16 and buying it in NJ or if I buy today is still white bread.

I can't remember the last time i bought a loaf of Wonder Bread. It serves a purpose. Peanut butter and jelly n white bread. Grilled cheese made with American cheese and a bowl of Campbell's cream of tomato soup. . My favorite brown bag lunch as a kid baloney, American cheese , dill pickle slices and French's mustard.

just like Italian bread I no longer eat any of the above.

In spite of my roots I travel to Europe once a year. The bread price difference is something very clear. It is not only cheaper but better in Europe. Taste wise the same goes for butter and chocolate.

For the vast numbers of Americans, there are no heritage or artensial bread makers just around the corner in the neighborhood. They only have big box (or small box) type supermarkets. This is the playground of BigBread™

Bread is easy to make at home

To answer your question OP, I didn't know that it necessarily was. Perhaps it's just your opinion. I don't buy the run-of-the-mill white bread and like rye (regular or marble) probably the best. Maybe you should try making your own bread, there are plenty of bread machines around, sometimes you can get a good deal at Goodwill or the Salvation Army stores.

Philadelphia has the bread thing completely covered with exceptional Italian, French and German breads and baked goods all over the city. Jose Garces even does his own great version of 6 Parker House Rolls tucked in a small cast iron skillet. Heaven.

I buy Ezekiel bread. Frozen.

R17 - It's ridiculous to say you can't get good Italian bread outside of the areas that you cited. Have you been to every baking establishment in the country? I don't live in any of those places and get great Italian bread, French bread, boule, panini, whole grain and practically every type of artisan bread.

Before the 1920s white bread was only eaten by the wealthy. The darker your bread the poorer you were.

R28, no you can't. The people who live in these metropolitan areas will tell you it's in the water.

The best bread we have ever tasted is the volkoren bread from the bakeries in Amsterdam. Even the supermarket volkoren bread in Amsterdam is far superior to the bakeries in the rest of Europe. It seems that most other bread is just crap.

I was going to say OP's premise was wrong about bread being expensive in the U.S., but it looks like he is right; At least compared to the rest of the world.

I make a version of the Paleo Nut Bread.

We have had to foresake all bread during the week,in favor of unsalted bio rice cakes, in the interest of our beautiful body.

RICE CAKES, r34.

They may have been touted as the ultimate diet food during the low-fat/no-fat craze of the late 1980s and 1990s, but don’t be fooled. Rice cakes can have a glycemic index rating as high as 91 (pure glucose has a rating of 100), making it the kind of carbohydrate that will send your blood sugar on a roller coaster ride. This is bad for weight loss and for your health.

Why is your ASS so expensive, and tasteless ? ?

Since this is an anonymous forum,I might as well fess up. My local Walmart bakes their bread on premises and it is DELISH. I was kind of flabbergasted. I originally picked it up because it was so cheap, but now I'm a secret fan.

Rice cakes were only meant to be consumed by women. Buying and eating them as a man will make your dick fall off.

Fribourg Switzerland's Cuchaule bread now has AOC status and pops up on citizenship tests, because it's expensive and unknown to immigrant families.

[quote] The people who live in these metropolitan areas will tell you it's in the water.

The people who live in those places will tell you a lot of things. They are very provincial that way.

Thanks R39, now to find a recipe!

I go to my bakery at Gelsons to find my French batard. The Whole Foods bakery said they’d make me one if I called ahead.

I got into making my own bread a few months ago and got awful Carpal Tunnel problems. It was impossible not to decimate the loaf as it exited the oven.

R41 good luck! Its pretty technical. Plus you'd need to go to another Canton - Valais, for the saffron, which is very pricey.

R43, I grow my own saffron. Seriously.

The bread in Prague is fresh a few times a day, and good, filling and cheap - chleba

Arnold buttermilk bread is delicious when it's fresh. However god only knows what they put in it, I mean I don't know what all the chemicals in the ingredients are. I do know that I have a two 1/2 old half a loaf sitting on my kitchen counter and it is neither hard nor moldy. I won't eat it because it's so old but I'm curious how long it will take for it to actually go bad as bread made of real food would. I also have a couple of slices of Levi's (sp?) seeded rye left for almost 3 months, no mold, no staleness. Now I have them both in sealed zipper bags but still they have just been sitting out, no refrigeration and they look like new. I'm sure they don't taste good but a store could sell them as fresh based just on appearance. Weird.

OMG_ I called the Gelsons baker lady and asked her to hold a batard for me. She made me a special one and is making petit fours for me tomorrow. And I’m not even rich or spend any real money there! I love pulling out the soft yummy part in the middle and dip it in butter. Of the batard. I mean.

It's so true that 'meriKKKan bread is so tasteless. If you go ANYWHERE in Europe, their bread is fantastic!

^ actually the bread all around Tuscany was tasteless, IIRC someone said the reason is they make it with no salt or sugar resulting in no taste

Any of you fucking Canadians eating that Manoucher Bread? Their fucking website has had an Online Ordering Tab for 3 years that still says "We are working on this"

Damn that bread was good!

There is plenty of good bread at Whole Foods and other slightly upscale grocery stores. I agree that what basic supermarkets call French bread tastes like cotton.

My son insisted on white bread only after eating it in school. He’s now 20 and still eats white bread. Ugh.

R27 thank you for the tip. I bought Ezekiel sprouted grain bread, sesame flavored and it’s good.

Damn it, R44, come back and talk to me about growing one's own saffron. I live in the high desert, but have a green house...

How about bread machines. Can they make good bread? any downsides?

When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1960s, there was a German bakery in town. They made the most wonderful bread and rolls. The white bread was tasty and flavorful; the rye bread was fantastic. And, around the corner from my grandmother's house in Jersey was an Italian bakery. They had a flat, round loaf that made great sandwiches.

What passes for bread today, except in rare places in America, is dreadful.

r56 ditto that comment about almost all foods, most clothing and many other household goods. not to mention our built environment.

nothing but shit, from sea to shining sea!

there are a few american staples that completely mystify foreign visitors

one is the beer, though artisanal beer has changed that some

the other is the bread which is consistently far worse than anywhere else

Very true, R57. Mostly everything that is made and sold today is poorly made crap that is cheap and disposable.

My grandmother called it "toast bread"

New bakery opened up in town and an acquaintance decided to treat her husband to a loaf of rye bread. No prices on products. She asked for a loaf and it rang up as $9. She was too embarrassed to refuse it and thus paid for it. She told her husband it was $4. He said that was too much for an average sized loaf of mediocre quality.

Milton's Multi-grain is good, best size/price at Costco; I like Oroweat Master's Best Winter Wheat as a treat; our parents were excellent chefs & we loved the whole wheat & white bread that they baked; apart from the beer in Berlin, I adore the breads, especially at breakfast, where, depending on where you are staying, you can choose from a variety, and cut your own--sublime!

I had a loaf of wheat bread a couple of years ago. I didn't like it so it sat there for a couple of weeks on the counter as I ignored it. As I was throwing stuff out I picked it up, figuring it would be moldy but there wasn't a speck on it. I did a little experiment and let it sit to see how long it would go before mold showed up. It took four months. They're doing something weird to bread.

That's bullshit, you can find just as expensive and tasteless bread (and other foods) in China, Japan, and all of Europe and the Middle East.

Why don't you take your racist trolling elsewhere.

[quote]American “cheese” is called processed/fake cheese elsewhere.

It's not fake cheese, it can't be labeled cheese if it was. And no I've been to Europe and no one calls it that, nor in China or Japan.

[quote]How about bread machines. Can they make good bread? any downsides?

They can make good bread, and at a reasonable cost. My Hamilton Beach machine (shown at the link) makes a 1.5-pound loaf in just under three hours at a cost of less than a dollar for ingredients. The machine itself is reasonably priced, as well.

Downsides? For me, slicing is the big one. I use an electric knife with an adjustable guide to help keep the slices straight and equal in size. Even with that, a lot of my slices end up looking like doorstops. I've been at this for a year and a half and STILL haven't mastered the technique.

Also, though it's certainly better for you, homemade bread doesn't seem to toast as nicely as the factory-made stuff with heaps of chemicals.

Yes, you can buy small pkgs of Wonder-type bread in Asia called toast bread. I think it's made with rice flour. Even "fresh" it tastes stale.

In Germany I used to buy vollkornbrot which basically looked like seeds and nuts compressed together. Loved it. Used to see something similar in a vacuum-packed plastic wrapper in the fridge section of US supermarkets but not lately.

R63 Purely by accident, much like yourself, I discovered that the popular supermarket brand breads seem to last forever on the kitchen counter. I found that somewhat worrisome wondering how many chemicals were added to prevent spoilage.

Fast forward, found a new European deli which also offered fresh baked rye bread. Crunchy crust and substantial - sliced and bagged to order. Yum! Left it on the kitchen counter, and in less than a week it was moldy. In fact, their deli meats don't keep very long either and they do advertise "No Preservatives". That's where we buy all our sandwich fixin's now. Oh, and their prices are equal to, or less than, supermarket prices.

Nice to support small independents when they can offer excellent quality at reasonable prices.

I live half a block from a locally owned bakery that bakes everything on site including bread. It's great. I'm in NY.

[quote]Even with that, a lot of my slices end up looking like doorstops. I've been at this for a year and a half and STILL haven't mastered the technique.

The trick is to not try to cut it straight. Are the pieces you cut usually wider at the bottom of your cut? You think you are cutting straight, but you are trending sideways. The trick means you have to cut so it feels like you're cutting crooked away from the direction it usually widens at. It's going to feel weird and you will think you are going to make it skinnier at the bottom but it'll end up straight. Don't go too crazy with it or you'll just end up reversing your doorstop. Give it a couple of tries and see how it goes.

Thanks, R69! I'll give that a try next time.

(You're right about the doorstops being wider at the bottom, BTW.)

Get a bread knife you twit. Why would anyone cut bread with an electric knife?

I guarantee your bread doesn't like you.

I have a bread knife, R71, but extremely poor slicing skill.

The guide on the electric knife helps (somewhat) to keep the blades positioned correctly. The blades, BTW, are serrated like the bread knife's blade, so it's not really much different, except for the guide.

I am sorry to be a twat :( - if you can't cut, I guess you are doing your best. But the vibrations of that knife and its thickness are working against the task.

R44, If that's true (I'm not trying to imply otherwise) that's amazing.

I prefer an electric knife because of arthritis in my elbow. A regular bread knife, which of course I have, aggravates it if I want to slice up the whole loaf. For me the electric knife works like a charm, just aim and keep going straight down, no doorstops.

*doesn't understand why the whole loaf needs slicing.

just cut what you need. stays more fresh that way.

Bread machines are great, and you can make a variety of different breads. I no longer own one, and won't acquire one, since I try to avoid carbohydrates. But, having used them, I'll add a recommendation: let the machine handle all the mixing, kneading and rising, but shape the loaf and bake it in the traditional manner once it's at that stage. The kneading and rising are the tedious part. Baking the bread is a no-brainer, and you can form your loaves in different styles, while a bread machine produces a rather awkward loaf.

American bread is a standardized product designed for low cost production, easy distribution, and a long shelf life. The same can be said for American milk, cheese, meats, and 1001 other products sold by supermarkets. It was the tremendous growth of the self-service supermarket in this country that destroyed the small independent bakers and created the Wonder Breads we know today. A&P wasn't about to deal with the local bakers, they wanted the same product in every store in the chain.

The quality of the product wasn't important, since the bread and buns were just a delivery vehicle for the hamburger, hot dog, or peanut butter and jelly that went inside them.

R78, the bread at bakeries around here is over $5 a loaf. There is an issue with a lot of the American public not being able to afford staples as they are priced at bakeries. And, no, the price at bakeries wouldn't go down and they wouldn't have stayed affordable if all the supermarkets either never opened or closed tomorrow. The small bakeries would not have been able to provide enough bread for over 300 million people. If we stuck 300 million people in France, they, too, would end up with cheap, mass-produced bread as the main bread and expensive little bakeries for those who could afford the better bread.

[quote]She asked for a loaf and it rang up as $9

wow, that's crazy

[quote]If we stuck 300 million people in France, they, too, would end up with cheap, mass-produced bread as the main bread and expensive little bakeries for those who could afford the better bread.

Yes and no. You're implying that mass-produced bread needs to be cheap and nasty, but some of the largest bakeries in the world are in Europe (see link), and the quality of their breads and rolls is outstanding. Not only are they able to produce a quality product, they're able to produce a wide variety of traditional hard rolls, rye breads, and other items you usually associate with small retail bakeries. In fact, some of their largest customers are small retail bakers who sell the wholesale bakers' product in their stores side by side with their own breads.

American bakeries can make these products too. You can take the same equipment that's cranking out Wonder-style balloon bread and with a few tweaks make a delicious French bread with a crust so crisp it'll scare you. The problem is, you better sell it within 24 hours and eat it within 36, 48 tops. After that it's a brick. That sort of timetable simply doesn't fit the needs of the supermarkets--it takes longer than that just to get it on to the shelf. So, to meet the needs of the supermarkets, they bake balloon bread, put it in plastic bags, and add preservatives to give it a shelf life of a week or more, and you wind up with what we call bread in this country.

It really does boil down to the supermarkets.

R81, how far does the bread have to travel from those bakeries in Europe to the markets? The vast geography of America is also a logistical issue. The bread would be stale for two days before it got to some parts of the country. It's not like Americans are asking for sucky, mushy bread. From my experience, the people who buy things like Wonder Bread don't have a lot of money. Our bread aisles are like the rest of our country, stratified by income with, literally, shitty crumbs for the poor.

I loved my grandmother’s soda bread which is nothing like the soda bread sold in US bakeries at St Patrick’s Day. My grandmother was from Northern Ireland and what they call soda bread is called “farls” elsewhere. We could never get a recipe because she would say “It’s a punch of this and a dash of that, depending on what thw weather is like.” Apparently the weather had an effect on grandma’s soda bread. She would whip up a batch and cook several on the griddle at a time. Nothing like my grandmother’s fresh toasted soda bread, buttered and dipped in egg yolk. Nothing like an Ulster fry up. No beans or tomatoes, thank ye.

Living in Philadelphia, we've always been blessed with great bread. There are still many neighborhood Italian bread bakeries that produce great loaves, rolls, etc. Everything from light and airy(Sarcone's) to very dense and chewy with a killer crust(Faragalli's)

Jewish bread bakeries used to be common, but are few and far between now. I can highly recommend Kaplan's for their ryes(corn and plain,both seeded, my go-to for all manner of sandwiches), challah, and black breads.

Artisinal breads are handled very well by Metropolitan Bakery, and also Whole Foods(both require a mini-mortgage though) ACME makes a passable baguette, go figure.

Middle Eastern and Hispanic breads can be had, just a few blocks from where I live.

I buy Pepperidge Farm Thin-Sliced White once a year to make bread pudding(hey, don't throw things) for Christmas dinner dessert.

Does anyone remember when you could buy a loaf of standard supermarket bread that had ROUND slices, baked presumably to accommodate cold cuts of the same shape?

R64 I’ve lived in the UK, Germany & Netherlands. They don’t sell much in the way of American style cheese because their own products are worlds better. An average supermarket cheese aisle has hundreds of types then the fresh deli counter will have even more. A lot of our products cannot legally be sold as cheese so are labelled ‘cheese type food’ or ‘cheese product’.

I know that US style Kraft mac’n’cheese cannot be sold in Europe because of its chemical additives. They have Kraft products but they are better quality than ours. Unsurprising really since mac’n’cheese is an English invention,

“Legal definitions:

Owing to its highly mechanized (i.e., assembly line) methods of production, and additive ingredients (e.g., oils, salts, or colors), some softer varieties of processed cheese cannot legally be labeled as actual "cheese" in many countries, even those in which slightly harder varieties can be. Such products tend to be classified as "cheese food", "cheese spread", or "cheese product" (depending primarily on the amount of cheese, moisture, and milkfat present in the final product).”

[quote][R81], how far does the bread have to travel from those bakeries in Europe to the markets? The vast geography of America is also a logistical issue. The bread would be stale for two days before it got to some parts of the country.

Sure, you're going to have problems bringing fresh croissants to western North Dakota, but for 90% of the population it can be done. We used to do it. 30 years ago commercially baked bread (Wonder, Butternut, Arnold's, etc.) had a 3 day shelf life in most markets, and almost every grocery store was served on a daily basis by bakery route trucks. The majority of the bread sold was less than 24 hours old. The industry changed from route sales to drop shipping where the bread was trucked from the bakery to the supermarket distribution warehouses, and then on to the stores as part of the store's daily delivery pipeline. It was supposed to save money. It was cheaper, but *surprise* the price never went down, the chain stores just took the extra profit and ran with it.

You see, my family was in the wholesale baking business for the better part of a century. I can wander over to eBay right now and find a dozen signs and other items with our name on them. I grew up with this.

][quote]Does anyone remember when you could buy a loaf of standard supermarket bread that had ROUND slices, baked presumably to accommodate cold cuts of the same shape?

Ah, round bread--"finally the bread fits the baloney!" Every 10 years or so some bright young thing decides that's the answer (I'm never sure what the question is, but it's the answer), so bakeries drag out their round bread pans and try it again. It's a major pain in the ass making round bread, not because it's difficult to bake, but because if you scroll up and watch that video I posted of the high volume bakery in Europe you'll notice that modern bakeries are pretty much one giant conveyor belt, and all sorts of comical things happen when you fill a giant conveyor belt with 1000's of things that like to roll. By the time you re-engineer everything to handle the round bread it's discontinued due to the stunning indifference the consumer has always shown for it, and the round pans go back to the warehouse to wait for their next outing.

They sell this in Britain, it’s called a milk roll. I didn’t try it but I saw it in shops.