Is Entenmann's still considered high quality?

They have cheapened their ingredients the last few years.

I had some of those tonight, and they still taste great to me!

What did you have Chrissy? It wasn't the chocolate fudge cake.

I'm sure three of them were fudge cakes; I'm not sure what the other two were.

No.

Read the ingredients, OP. They are garbage products now.

They, like seemingly every single company out there, crapped up their products during the pandemic because they figured people either would be desperate and not care or not notice. Everything is either crappier or shrunken down.

We used to get their chocolate covered donuts. The last time we tried them, the once shiny and dark chocolate that cracked when you bit into it was dull, lighter colored, and soft. And, of course, the price was higher.

When was it ever considered high quality?

R8, they were always decent. Not as "industrial" as things like Hostess and Little Debbie.

Yes 40 and 50 years ago they were tasty, quality products. It was a "quality" "local" brand in NY metro area. Yes, I'm old.

My local outlet store did not survive the pandemic.

I don't know the situation in USA. But now in Europe there are a number of brands in Italy, Germany, France and Switzerland that make cookies and cakes for supermarket distribution but with the real whole ingredients of yesteryear. So butter and eggs and cream and nuts and real fruit. You just have to read the labels and reward them by buying their products. They aren't even luxury products. I think there are enough average folks who care nowadays and got sick fo the crap in the industrial, cheap products. They just want an honest Linzer torte or sablé aux noix.

No.

It's "high quality" rep was within the context of premade, processed bakery items, which generally aren't as good as fresh baked stuff. Nevertheless.

They'd charge premium prices in the US, R12. I wonder if you have intercountry price controls on products that might be helping keep the prices down?

The Entenmann's outlet in my city closed at the beginning of the pandemic and has never reopened. I saw one of their reps in a Kroger a few months ago and asked him if it was going to reopen. He said not for the foreseeable future because they are selling every item they put on grocer's shelves, so they have no outdated returns to sell at the outlet. I used to be able to get 6 Thomas' English Muffins for $1.00, which is about a third of what Kroger charges. BTW, Entenmann's is owned by Bimbo Bakeries (and they pronounce it Beem-bo).

Maybe. I even noticed it creeping down to the "store brand" budge level with surprisingly good butter cookies things like butter appearing again in brioche and "industrial" croissant, etc.

The quality of mass market food for uneducated budget conscious consumers in Europe was plunging into the toilet for years. Increasingly cheap industrial garbage, and kids are getting fat, too! Maybe "they" want to turn it around but I think there are just more consumers who know that its garbage and want to buy real food again.

Entenmann's was NEVER that great. Their donuts were satisfactory but nothing special. Ca. 1980 their stuff was a C to a C+. It's possible they've cheapened the ingredients since the 1980's. It's now owned by BIMBO a Mexican company. Since 1978 it's been sold at least three times.

Maybe you have Covid

or a less refined palette than our target customers of discerning taste

They're overrated

In the 70s an Entenmanns crumb cake or box of chocolate chip cookies was acceptable to serve to drop in guests or bring to an informal drop in on family or neighbors. It wasn't the same as a box from the local bakery but it wasn't an embarrassing national garbage brand from Grand Union or A&P.

If one wants a decent cake or cookies that are reasonably priced I would go to Trader Joe's. I really like their Way More Chocolate Chip Cookies. They have butter not margarine or vegetable fat.

Even in the 70s, Sara Lee was considered a trashy brand that pretended to be good.

In the 70s they had this sot of brand of food in most regions. For example a fri-state region. There would be a regional bakery and a dairy - Ice Cream company, and a chips company, and so on and so on, and the products were considered "quality" over the national brands.

In the '90s it was worth a little over $2.

"In the 70s they had this sot of brand of food in most regions. For example a fri-state region. There would be a regional bakery and a dairy - Ice Cream company, and a chips company, and so on and so on, and the products were considered "quality" over the national brands. "

Right. I remember in Minnesota we had "Barrel O Fun" chips and Bridgeman's ice cream.

R20- It's not acceptable to bring a SUPERMARKET cake over to someone's house. Entenmann's is/was a supermarket cake and ALWAYS just average.

Honey I'm talking middle middle class. In the 70s. Quality declined long ago. Nobody is claiming it was Franz Sacher's Sachertorte.

No.

It was never great, but there was a time when you could eat it without gagging, especially after a few seconds in the microwave.

Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.

Nowadays, we have dollar store pound cake.

I buy from the supermarket bakery. I find I can't tolerate the cheap-ass stuff ( looking at you Entenmanns, your chocolate chip cookies were once divine)

My partner says snacks just don't taste the same since COVID messed up production, but he doesn't say that about other food.

Yesterday I bought a box of Entenmann's Cinnamon Swirl Buns, the first Entenmann's product I'd bought in quite some time. I was unimpressed with the taste. I was also a bit surprised when I rang up the box at the self-checkout and saw "$7.99."

They do do a good job of making the new stuff look pretty much like the old stuff, so you're surprised when the taste isn't the same.

I used to love the All Butter Pound Loaf.

[quote]It's not acceptable to bring a SUPERMARKET cake over to someone's house. Entenmann's is/was a supermarket cake and ALWAYS just average.

How about a chocolate babka?

It used to be good, but not anymore.

The brand that went downhill and broke my heart was Tastycake. Grew up on them back in the day in PA, and now it's garbage. *sniff*

Entemmann's had great danish, both Raspberry and Cream Cheese. I've not seen any of that in a long time. CALA Foods in the San Francisco area, carried a lot of their products.

I liked their chocolate marshmallow cake. Seriously it should be a crime to reduce the size of any type of product and then increase the price. Who wants to pay even more for even less?

To me, the crime is selling what's essentially a new product dollied up to look like the great-tasting old product it no longer is.

Hershey's is infamous for doing this. Look at Mr. Goodbar. Ya gotta read very carefully to know that familiar wrapping doesn't mention chocolate. Or you can wait and taste the crappy thing.

They’ve always been considered white trash.

The Danish was okay the few times I had it. Damn you, OP! Now I want a Raspberry Cheese Danish, with a cup of hot tea.

I love their coffee crumb cake. Wasa sells them in individually wrapped packages of 6 in a box. I remember working my first job at a university; the department secretary put out a fresh entermans coffee cake every morning and brewed coffee.

You know what, I think the Sara Lee coffee cake, the one you put in the oven, is good.

R27- The same can be said about Dunkin Donuts. They were never great donuts but they were satisfactory. Now DD doesn't give a shit about their donuts. The last time I bought some donuts there they tasted kinda burnt. My father once told me that means that they're not changing the oil in which the donuts are cooked. Up until the 1990's they used to emphasize the freshness of their donuts. NOT anymore.

The worst thing about Entenmann's is how artificial they've become. Go look at the ingredients in any of their products. Chemicals, preservatives with names you can't even pronounce. In addition, the size of all the products have shrunk. The marshmallow iced devils food cake, for example, is a thin little cake that's about an inch thick total. Literally a fraction of the size it was years ago.

It tastes better than my wedding cake

I loved their banana cake, haven’t seen one in years. Also their raspberry filled donuts.

I got some Dunkin Donuts recently for the first time in many years. I found them inedible and I’m not that picky. Ended up throwing them out. They didn’t taste burned or stale, they just didn’t taste like donuts. They were like imitation donuts I guess.

I’ve always thought most of Entenmann’s stuff I’ve tried was barely passable, but their chocolate chip cookies used to be good. Now they’re inedible too.

In the old days DD made the donuts, now they just get them delivered and when one type runs out that is it for the day.

Their glazed donuts or crullers were delicious but it’s been decades since I’ve had one.

R47- I assume you're talking about DD not Entenmann's. E's never had a raspberry filled donut.

R25 In Texas, we have Shipley’s Donuts and Blue Bell Ice Cream. (I know, I know…listeria years ago…but their butter pecan is unsurpassed). If you get Shipley’s glazed right out of the oven, they literally melt in your mouth. Heavenly.

Stay away from my Entenmann’s bitches! I AM the EMPRESS OF ENTENMANN’S!!

There's a similar company called Freihoffers (sp?) that my mother used to rave about. Seems they were "even better than Entenmann's" back in the 70s when she was growing up, but by the time I came along they'd been sold and were allegedly nowhere near as good.

I used to pig out on it in the 90s after a night of sexing when I lived in the West Village. It was perfect for getting in hungry at 3am. But haven't had it in decades.

And btw everyone on this thread types like a fat whore.

not available in the southwest

Was Pepperidge Farms above or below them?

R7 Al Pacino used to eat a whole box of Entenmann's Chocolate Donuts every day.

Entenmann’s was sold to the Bobo brothers years ago.

Yes.

The Bobo Brothers.

They immediately cheapened the ingredients and have been continuing to find even cheaper substitutes than the merely cheap substitutes.

My mistake, it’s not the Bobos, it’s the Bimbos. The Bimbo Brothers bought Entenmann’s

Pepperidge Fahm was always superior to the rather plebeian, Ellis-Island-tinged Entenmann's. But now they've gone to shit too—Flavor Blasted Goldfish, indeed!

Entemann's made good products until 1978 when it was sold to Warner Lambert. As all large companies do when the acquire a smaller company with a good reputation they cheapen the product to try to squeeze more money out of it to recoup their cost of acquiring the company. This started the downfall of the product line.

The Butter French Crumb Cake was my favorite. Way better than the square one with confectioner's sugar on top.

I recently had a Stauffer's macaroni & cheese frozen entree. The same thing with it: different taste, runnier cheese sauce, thinner, smaller macaroni. Brawny paper towels used to be rather robust, now they're not any stronger than a store brand towel.

When I was a kid, Chef Boyardee products tasted like canned pasta. Now they taste like canned paste.

65 posts and no mention of Celebration Cak?! Am I the only old DL'er left?

How DOES one flavour blast goldfish?

Their chocolate fudge cake is my guilty pleasure. I never knew the brand was once considered high quality, I've always felt like total trash eating it for as long as I can remember.

[quote] E. Bennis

Oh, DEAR!

I grew up on Long Island and Entenmann’s was extremely fresh supermarket cake. Their bakery was in Suffolk county and they delivered to select supermarkets every day. Eventually they delivered to almost all supermarkets. Then they went nationwide.

My mother said the two old Entenmann’s ladies -- sisters in law — used to lunch at a local restaurant. They were very nice ladies and they liked their cocktails. She said they would walk out of the restaurant holding onto each other they were so smashed, and everyone expected to hear a crash after they left the parking lot in their car (some kind of huge land yacht). But they’d always be back, as well dressed, well groomed and polite as ever.

As with Fortunoff and so many other businesses, the third & 4th generations were uninterested in running the business build by their grandfathers & great grandfathers. They took the money and ran.

Entenmann’s has become a sugar delivery system. Look at the cake itself--no matter what you buy it's the same bland, tasteless, cheap cake with different fillings and toppings applied. They put all their money into the sugary fillings and the icing.

50 Years ago, Entenmann's was great. On Long Island (NY) we even had an outlet store where you could buy day-old products.

One of my favorites was the Louisiana Crunch Cake. But there were many others.

It's shit now (mostly) but no one should be looking down their noses at what it was in those days. Everything has gone downhill. Unless you're in a European bake shop, even today's bakeries - if you can find them - sell junk.

Pepperidge Farm were good supermarket cookies years ago. Once in a while I still buy them. They’re rather tasteless.

I'm glad a few NY metro area oldsters share my memory that decades ago Entenmann's was a quality product. As was Freihofer's.

R74

I went to school upstate NY (70s) and Freihofer's was our go to munchie food when we got high. Boxes and boxes of chocolate chip cookies. And we had them delivered - though I no longer remember how or why. I think maybe Freihofer's delivery trucks? I know they existed but they wouldn't be around at night, I don't think. Maybe it was the pizza place.

GREAT chocolate chip cookies. Even when we weren't high.

Another company sold to Bimbo.

Point of order: when was it ever considered high quality?

It's basically fancy junk food.

Just from this thread R76, it seems that it was a local specialty that was made at a single bakery plant and transported locally on Long Island.

Which would have made it a massive step up from Chips Ahoy or whatever supermarket cookies people ate fifty years ago.

The Chips Ahoy cookie was cribbed from the Toll House cookie, which came from a homemade cookie recipe by Ruth Graves Wakefield, who sent them in care packages to troops overseas.

Pretty much every junk food has some local delicacy origin.

My favorite was Entenmann’s Bumpy Cake, which I had on my 40th birthday in 1970, and today, it just doesn’t taste the same. Maybe it’s because I’m in my late 50s now and my taste buds aren’t what they used to be, but the taste has definitely changed.

R79 I’m confused by your time table?

I used to love the Brownie Crumb Ring.

Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies were never acceptable. Always terrible, terrible cookies. But cakes were good until the Bimbos bought it.

In the South, we started getting Entenmann's in 1982-83. It was a big deal to get it because their coffee cakes and pastries and donuts were considered a delicacy by transplants from New York.

I specifically recall their crumb cake was quite good, became a favorite of mine. As did many of their coffee cakes. Never really liked their donuts or pastries that much

I especially like their raspberry pastry as it had icing on it and was gooey and gave me diabetes.

I'm just piling on now with nothing new to add, but yes, when I moved to New York in the early '70s, Entenmann's was considered a quality, fresh product a cut above the standard grocery store baked goods. Their breakfast pastries were particularly good and I loved their cinnamon rolls and various coffee cakes. It's all shit now.

My mom would get Entenmann's as a treat when we were kids, it was very good. Now the only really good cake I can find is at a local bakery, and a chocolate mousse cake I bought for my partner's birthday cost me thirty dollars for a small cake. We don't eat that much cake anymore.

Stick with Little Debbie’s, they reek of quality.

R82- Those BIMBOS are SLUTSa

R86- Trader Joe's has some nice cakes that are reasonably priced. They're not as good as a bakery but they're better than anything in a regular supermarket nowadays.

Why did it take until R8?

Can anything in a cardboard box and a clear plastic window be called quality? It maybe good but is it quality?

High quality?

OP, which one are you in that dancing Applebee's commercial?

"My favorite was Entenmann’s Bumpy Cake, which I had on my 40th birthday in 1970, and today, it just doesn’t taste the same. Maybe it’s because I’m in my late 50s now and my taste buds aren’t what they used to be, but the taste has definitely changed."

So you were 40 in 1970 and 51 years later you're only in your late 50's?

Let me guess, you still get carded at the liquor store.

Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs are higher quality.

I think a lot of baked goods taste different now that trans fats aren’t allowed…used to love Entenmann’s low-fat glazed donuts. They were better than the full fat version.

If you just put it in a blender with chocolate Haagen Dazs and some chocolate syrup, you'll hardly notice they changed the recipe.

This thread needs a gastric bypass.

It's "high quality" if you live in a trailer park.

We'uns consider it elite food and won't eat it.

R79 is giving his age in pastry years

Owner ought to be embarrassed.

Their chocolate covered donuts used to taste like semi-decent chocolate covered donuts.

Now their chocolate covered donuts taste like slightly-hardened Wonder Bread covered with wax.

R94- Yodels and Ring Dings are FAR BETTER than Ho ho's and Ding Dongs.

I'm not sure what they did to Hostess products, but they're all rank now. I used to love a Twinkee, now they are yuckarama. Twinkee's used to be soft and spongy and really good, now they all taste stale. And no, I'm not Ann Blythe (that whore Veda).

R103- The company that makes Hostess products now is the THIRD owner since the 1990's.

My maternal grandparents swore by Entenmann’s when they were alive. When my brother and I would visit, they’d stock up on their coffee cakes and danish. That was in the 70s, though. I don’t eat a lot of pastries anymore, unless I prepare them myself or buy them from the bakery. If you are gonna indulge, get the good stuff. Recent purchases of Entenmann’s have been disappointing. Especially the donuts. The coffee cake is bland and dry.

Uh, yeah right, R80...as if YOU don't use YOUR time machine on the weekends or when bored.

Heinemann's is the best

Company has been changed hands a dizzying number of times in the past 43 years. This is the Wikipedia entry regarding its ownership:

[quote]The pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert purchased Entenmann's in 1978, and then sold it to General Foods in 1982. General Foods merged with Kraft in 1990. Kraft General Foods sold its bakery business to CPC International (later Bestfoods) in 1995. Bestfoods was purchased by Unilever in 2000, which sold its baking division to George Weston, a Canadian baked goods and supermarket business, the next year. Weston sold its United States interests including Entenmann's, in 2008 to Mexican conglomerate Grupo Bimbo.[3] Other Bimbo Bakeries USA holdings include Thomas', Brownberry, Boboli, Arnold, Oroweat, Freihofer’s, and Stroehmann.[5]

Ahh, the sale to General Foods in 1982 would correspond with when Entenmann's started appearing in grocery stores in the South.

Not defending Bimbo, but blaming them for the decline of companies like Entenmann's, Sara Lee, and even Hostess misses the mark, because the damage to those brands was done by a small army of investment bankers, buyout specialists, and corporate raiders (who love bakeries because of their quick inventory turns and strong cash flow). Bimbo just kinda sat there and picked up what was left after the robber barons finished their looting.

No, Bimbo's specialty is turning out low-end product that looks ten times better than it tastes. And they've owned Entenmann's since 2002. They own this dog.

[quote]Other Bimbo Bakeries USA holdings include Thomas', Brownberry, Boboli, Arnold, Oroweat, Freihofer’s, and Stroehmann

Well, Ororweat breads and Thomas' muffins certainly have gone down in quality since I was first introduced to them.

Both are still better than store brand breads and muffins (and a lot more expensive), but they are definitely using cheaper ingredients than before.

Slightly off topic but has anyone noticed how much smaller bars of soap have gotten? Are companies cheapening all supermarket items?

R113

Yes. All of them.

No, but on a slightly related note I did come across Vienetta frozen dessert again. I bought one, vanilla, but have not tried it yet.

the cinnamon roll never had enough cinnamon. Raspberry danish twist is still good. The snack-size pies are no different from Hostess or Drakes. Marshmallow Iced Devils Food is still blissful trash.

I live in the Philly area, and I know some people who still claim Entenmann's chocolate cookies are "to die for", but to me they taste like I imagine sawdust would taste.

We should all learn to bake. Making things fresh from scratch is probably better than buying premade shot loaded with trans fat and preservatives. Looking through Pinterest, I found several recipes. I made my own banana oat bread with Kodak Protein pancake mix and oatmeal. Used Splenda instead of regular sugar. I intend to do more.

R118 Some of us only have a microwave and a hotplate.

Because their mothers don’t allow cooking in the basement r119…

I buy my meal pre-made by the Mexican lady who runs the Laundromat next to my SRO.

No, R113. Your hands just got fatter from all of the Entenmann's

Bitch @ r122, I will cut you!

I used to love the chocolate covered donuts but now they taste like cardboard and the ingredients are just chemicals.

All the Entenmann's Outlet stores in my area closed. Now I have to pay full price.

I live in Mount Pilot but I got out of my way to go to Boysinger's Bakery. Not only are their baked goods first class, I get to flirt with Millie that cute as pie (pie - get it) counter girl.

I pass by the Entenmann table at the supermarket every week and it’s strange because there’s never anything on sale. It’s in the bread and dairy aisle and all sorts of products are marked down but never Entenmenns.

Even my beloved Tastykakes no longer taste like they did when I was young. I wonder if it had something to do with the lard that they used back then. Lard has gotten a bum rap over the years. At least it was natural.

This thread makes me realize how much SO much of what we consume has become shit. If there's a way to cheapen and charge just as much or more, America will find a way - good, clothing, appliances, services, home construction, various services, and on and on.

"Quality" is now considered "luxury." -- so you often have to pay more for even base level quality. I know - "you get what you pay for" has always been a saying - but the goal posts inherent in that idea have shifted. And now, sometimes you don't even get more quality by paying more - you simply have the chance and really need to now a lot about the product you're purchasing.

And America largely seems to not care. Not everyone of course, but just generally. We're trained consumerists who like to spend money and get new stuff!!

Has Warren Buffett kept up the quality of See's?

[quote] Slightly off topic but has anyone noticed how much smaller bars of soap have gotten?

Check out Pier One. They sell bar soap for $15. Marked down from $22.

Link

I had no idea Pier one still existed online after closing the stores.

Anyway, from R129

"good" was supposed to be "food."

"now" ("really need to now a lot") was supposed to be "know."

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco mentions Entenmann's in one of his routines. He said he and his siblings weren't allowed to have any of the Entenmann's in their house, Entenmann's was special and saved for any company that might drop by.

The routine was actually about how unexpected company is a thing of the past but I was more struck by his Italian immigrant parents thinking Entenmann's was special. My immigrant Italian family served Stella D'oro cookies with coffee to unexpected company not Entenmann's. On Sundays guests were treated to real Italian pastries from the weekly visit to the bakery.

As a kid I thought coffee cake was made of coffee.

Lol, R135, so did I.

It once was?

But Entenmann's was indeed high quality. It never came in a can.

Hostess and Drakes fruit pies were delicious lard and cane sugar. The crust was crack. And we were skinny!

There was a website that had recipes that copied popular baked goods and fast food chains. I can’t find it now 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Child, that marshmallow iced chocolate cake. When I first moved out and lived on my own and realized I could eat whatever I want, whenever I want...oh I would gorge myself sick on it.

Another native NYer here. It seems that Entenmann's has discontinued their pumpkin pie, one of the best things they ever made. It was also one of the few Entenmann's items that was still excellent into the 2010s. It was always a big seller, or so it seemed. It was a fixture around the holidays in so many homes.

It seems like a crazy thing to discontinue. Dammit.

I picked up a lemon cake from Entenmann's, it was tasty. Good icing to cake ratio. It was a bit too sweet. Expensive for a mass produced supermarket brand.

Maybe the bigger question is “Is Entenmann’s still edible?”

When I was a kid I used to only eat Chef Boyardee canned pastas. recently, I bought a can of spaghetti and meatballs and tried it, the first thing I noticed were the meatballs, the were much smaller than I remember. Then I tried it and it tasted like crap. Either your tastebuds change over the years or they've changed the recipe. The current product is inedible.

R145, r65 agrees with you.

After eating higher quality jarred pasta sauce and then learning how to make my own, I could never touch Chef Boyardee’s canned dooky again. Same with mashed potatoes. I can’t stand the dried instant shit anymore. There are some ready-made brands out there that you just nuke them or heat them up in a saucepan, but I use them only if I am feeling lazy.

This is an interesting thread for me, because I'll admit I spent a big chunk of my career working for some of the companies discussed here. I don't disagree that almost no baked product is as good as it was 25 years ago, but the reasons haven't really been mentioned.

In about 1980 it became obvious that the bakery business had two major problems. The first problem was that most big bakeries were old, antiquated, full of asbestos, and located in parts of town that were no longer ideal for serving the suburbs efficiently or attracting well qualified employees. The second problem was that the distribution system comprised of an army of bread trucks driven by union salesmen delivering bread and cake to every grocery store and restaurant on almost a daily basis was no longer viable.

The answer to the first problem seemed simple. The corporate owners built new modern bakeries in the suburbs. They would be highly automated and very efficient. By and large they were a disaster. The automation didn't work, the cost savings were an illusion, and the old Black guys who had spent 30 years watching the Twinkies come out of the oven and making sure they were just right said to Hell with this and retired or quit. The classic example of this is Drake Cakes. They built a modern plant outside Philadelphia and it damn near broke the company because their product suffered so much and the new help didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They massively reformulated their product, not because they were looking to cut ingredient costs, but because they were trying to get a formula that would work on their new machinery. Nabisco is having many of the same problems right now because they moved their US production to Mexico. They can't duplicate the quality of what they used to bake in the USA. A lot of the products have never recovered. A Twinkie used to be a thing of beauty. It was complete crap as far as ingredients and nutrition was concerned, it's always been that, but their old plant in Chicago turned out a product with a taste and texture that was amazing. I worked for a competitor, and we couldn't come close to matching what they were putting out. It drove my bosses absolutely insane.

The other problem is that the distribution changed. Instead of those bread trucks and route salesmen going to every store every day they went to drop shipping their. product to grocery warehouses. The modern "super bakeries" also allowed them to ship farther and farther from the bakery (Entenmann's big push into the South mentioned earlier in this thread is a good example). To revisit the Twinkie, there was a time when the Twinkie you bought at a convenience store. in Chicago was probably delivered that morning, had left the bakery at 6AM, and probably came out of the oven at midnight. You were getting a product within hours. Freshness was almost guaranteed.

Now they were shipping it up to 600 miles to a grocery distribution facility where it would sit until it got loaded onto the truck to the individual grocery store, where it would sit in the backroom until some bored teenager pushed it out and put it on the bread rack. That baked good could be 3 or 4 days old before it ever even hit the shelf. When I was in the business the fresh bread we delivered on Monday would be pulled as stale on Thursday. Now you're lucky if it even hits the shelf by then.

To be fair, these changes were largely dictated by the grocers, not the bakers, but to deal with the new distribution system they needed to reformulate their products to increase its shelf life. All sorts of weird stuff has been added to keep the products moist, prevent mold, and generally extend the shelf life, none of it really having anything to do with taste or quality.

I've been out of the business for decades, so I'm on the outside looking in, but everything I see makes me glad I left when I did.

Thanks r148. Super-informative. Really appreciate the insights.

R148

Wow. Thanks very much! That was a great contribution to a very interesting thread.

I'll tell you a funny story. I think this happened at Drakes, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, they had this ancient bakery. Most of the equipment dated back to the 40's and 50's, and everyone knew the formula--XXXX pounds of flour, let the dough rise for XX minutes at X% humidity, bake in the oven at XXX degrees, set the oven conveyor to travel at X feet per minute, and so on and so on. They build their new modern bakery, all the old Union guys who had worked there for decades leave, and they start making product. It was a disaster.

What they never considered was that in 50 years no one ever actually calibrated any of the gauges, and nothing in that plant was accurate. The gauge on the old oven said 325, but it was 15 off and had been for 30 years, and it was like that with every gauge in the place--they were accurate unto themselves, but the readings had no connection to the numbers on the dials. None of the old Union guys paid the slightest attention to anything the gauges said, they didn't have to--they knew what they were doing. If the product was too dark the oven man fiddled with it until the cakes coming out were the perfect color. If it was hot and humid outside that day they knew what to do to compensate. All that tribal knowledge was lost, and they had to basically reinvent their whole production system. Took months.

R138, Canned brown bread isn't like sandwich bread. Made from molasses and usually including raisins, it's a much less sweet version of banana bread. Comparable to old fashioned date nut bread which has gotten ridiculously expensive.

Canned brown bread is usually served with baked beans or hot dogs. Tasty pan fried in butter or served with cream cheese for breakfast.

[quote]Canned brown bread is usually served with baked beans or hot dogs. Tasty pan fried in butter or served with cream cheese for breakfast.

Good god.

R148/R151 Old Baker

I'm wondering if you were at all involved with buying Ekco Products Industrial Bakeware? Maybe you knew my cousin who was a sales region manager.

Entenmann's wasn't ever considered high quality.

R154. I knew the Ekco guys a bit, although I was never responsible for buying pans. I did work with them on having pans re-glazed and reconditioned, so if he worked at their plant on North Cicero in Chicago I almost certainly met him. They were a good company.

This is reply 156...Who would've imagined a thread about Entenmann's would get so many responses on DL?

I expected it. Its crack for DL. Its about junk food for fat whores. It solicits judgements and roleplaying about that is quality and what is not. And it puts the rosy past in juxtaposition to the degraded present.

If you want to eat a GOOD coffee cake try Whole Foods. They used to be $6.99 each, which was a bargain. They are very tasty and heavy ( weight). Their price is now $7.99 and it's still a bargain , especially for Whole Foods. I would serve that cake to myself with Haagen Dazs Strawberry Ice Cream- YUM!

Nope. It tastes like stale shit now.

Old bakery guy has me craving an old school twinkie, now. These foods just don't taste good anymore. I thought HFCS and GMOS were to blame! I didn't realize the fucking baking plants were the problem in producing good tasting food!You can't even have a good cheat day because the stuff is so tasteless.

R161- I said this earlier in the thread. The Hostess company has been sold MANY times over the last 30 years. I bought those SNO- BALLS they are smaller than they used to be and don't have hardly any flavor and I ate some raspberry zingers recently and they tasted kind of bitter. The current owners of Hostess have RUINED their products.

Only if you're into High Yellow, OP..!

Such moist cak!

[quote]This is reply 156...Who would've imagined a thread about Entenmann's would get so many responses on DL?

DL is home of the fat whores who rejoice over food. You should be surprised that we aren't already on a second thread about it.

I loved their cinnamon buns with cherries. I think they were out for about a year back in the early 1980s but they disappeared along with the cinnamon buns with apples. I miss their cherry beehive pie, too.

Just tried their soft baked Cinnamon mini tarts. There are six bags, five in each bag. The flavor was decent. They might be serviceable as a morning starter or if you’re curbing your baked goods intake. I’ll probably buy these again but I doubt I’ll try their other varieties (chocolate chip, blueberry muffin and the ominously named “Party).

Sometimes the bodegas sell these one-off, no-name brand pastries for really cheap. Tasty AF - but don’t read the ingredients, which contain some unpronounceable chemicals and that dreaded palm oil.

I use to love it, but stopped buying a few years ago for diet reasons. The glazed popems and glazed donuts are great as are the chocolate chip cookies. I also loved the mocha cake. One cake my mom used to buy that I never see anymore is their Bundt cake with a chocolate on the outside and vanilla cake with chips inside. I can’t even find a picture of it on google. Does anyone remember it?

The 22 Best and Worst Products from Entenmann's