You can buy bread that is made well and tastes good in the US. It's just the most popular stuff is garbage.
I make a lot of my own bread which is even better.
Everything people say they want it obtainable -- it usually costs time and or money. What they are really saying is they want it at the same price as the other stuff...but using stuff like corn syrup is why it's cheap in the first place.
It's worth noting that when you're traveling to foreign countries, like that guy did in Italy, you're also doing things like eating out more and eating higher quality foods. You're not buying pantry staples.
As someone who’s traveled and stayed long enough in parts of Europe to buy pantry staples and cook- the pantry staples are leaps and bounds better too. It’s not just restaurant food.
I don't know of any bread with corn syrup in it. Sugars, yes: my two favorites are honey wheat [honey, sugar] and sweet dark [brown sugar] but neither are super-sweet breads.
As a baker in the US, this one always pisses me off. We have plenty of local bakeries that make good bread. Just because super cheap, highly processed stuff exists here, doesn't mean it's the norm nor our only option.
A lot of non-Americans think Cool Whip is a form of ready-to-use whipped cream, and it's always funny when they learn the truth.
It's mostly corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil. It has less than 2% light cream(not 2% fat cream, less than 2% of the content is cream).
That’s not the point. Convenience consumerism killed off small/local bakeries in favor of mass produced shelf stable products. You can go around to most grocers or bakers in Europe and get a baguette for €1-2.
There are two small local bakeries within a 5 minute walk of me, and I live in a smaller city in Oregon not some thriving urban foodie city. The better one mostly supplies local restaurants, but on days he opens to public there's a line out the door. A baguette is $3.
I’ve never been to a major American city that didn’t have numerous local bakery’s that make high quality bread. You don’t know what you’re talking about
It is not the same. There are bakeries all over the place in Europe and it is cheap. I live in Chicago, and the majority of bread utilized by local delis comes from one specific bakery. Everything else is mass produced, shelf stable product. Small batch bread runs $10 a loaf here when it would be a couple of euros or less abroad.
It’s not difficult to turn flour and yeast into bread
Omaha has tons of bakeries. Big ones such as Rotella’s who does a variety of bread but are pretty generic white bread… bunch of European style bakeries out there German, Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, and French… I’m sure I saw Indian restaurants which means there is naans being baked and so therefore there is a global presence of bakers beyond just western style breads. Also falafel exists which means there is middle eastern style baking going on.
I highly doubt Omaha has Chicago on the baking game though
Bakers are a market staple… restaurants want something different that can open up a set of hands for doing something else besides baking bread or outright hiring a specific baker as an employee.
Yes, because I would magically be successful introducing bread into a consumer market where long standing bakeries have closed or don’t sell large enough quantities of bread to warrant the effort.
I implore you to leave your small town and see the world. People opine poetically about Europe, Italy/France in particular, because of their food standards and economy. Markets and small batch producers still exist there. In cities like mine the farmers market is once a week, and getting groceries from independent producers would take half a day. In Europe you can walk from the deli to the bakery next door, then to a cheese monger, etc.
You know people tend to retire and markets expand to fill the gap… otherwise all these small bakers wouldn’t exist… even Dunkin donuts wouldn’t exist in your world
Omaha is not 6,000 people my dude… I moved from Omaha… I get you maybe didn’t read my comment… bakers exist, maybe you just aren’t looking hard enough
Talking about cheese like you’ve never been to Wisconsin before 🤦♂️
The point of my original comment is shelf stable products killed the demand for small batch bakeries decades ago.
I’m not arguing that you can find a good bakery. I’m telling you, as someone who bitches about this incessantly, there is a difference in bread between markets. NYC has a better bread economy than places like Chicago. Even a city my size struggles because most bakeries focus on pastries and most loafs come from one bakery (D’Amatos).
You know there are different types of bread? You can buy the hell you want, you can buy the same bread in usa that you buy in europe. What a bunch of brain dead people.
I have been plenty of times in the states as my wife is American and I cannot go to a wallmart, HEB or a target and get bread thats comparable to back home. Back home i can get quality bread from any supermarket chain.
I mean dood. There are fresh bakeries all over the place. And plenty of massive chains have great in-house bread. Yeah, is wonderbread gross? Sure is but that's like saying American beer is Budweiser or Coors. There are quite literally 70 different beer choices for me and half of them are brewed here. Same thing with bread.
The basis of my argument isn’t that good, fresh, or cheap bread doesn’t exist in the states. It’s that the combination of the three is very rare. A good crusty baguette from a French bakery is basically $2. To get the equivalent quality here you are paying $5 or more in a HCOL area and it stems from a corporate push to get consumers to buy more shelf stable products, which in turn killed a lot of smaller bakeries.
Dunno what an HEB is but target and wal-mart are not places you should be grocery shopping. Lidl, aldi, costco, Wegmans, whole foods, and giant (locations depending) are all much better places that have actual in house bakeries.
Its a wholesaler. Yes it requires a membership but its not like its exclusive. And costco isn't greedy about it. They probably have one of the healthiest workplaces in America with benefits and respect
My family is Spanish and I live in Boston. I can find equivalent bread here no problem. The supermarket has 2 brands of bread from local bakeries that each have 5-6 varieties. There are also the shittier mass distribution selections, but you're under no obligation to buy those. I suspect if you bought bad bread, you made a bad selection. That might be easier to do here, some of the loaves do suck, but once you know your way around them there's plenty of good stuff available.
I think a lot of this is because we have been conditioned to eat soft bread that is shelf stable. The bread I dream about from Europe is just a cheap crusty baguette that has a 1-2 day shelf life before it turns into a brick.
Americans haven't the faintest idea of what good bread is. Most of the people living here have never been to a bakery in the morning picking out freshly made baked goods like bread. At best they see a "bakery" at some super store and its nothing but pre-made cakes, some really badly made French and Italian loafs (they dont hire bakers for this, its usually some teens with a sheet of paper telling them how to bake), and if youre lucky maybe some rolls.
It's a shame really, I miss it the most from Europe.
Oh, yes, us poor sheltered Americans. No 'real' bread in sight. Not a bakery to be found in the entire country. No ovens in our homes. No flour or yeast in the stores. Whatever will we do?! 🙄 You might want to get out more.
If that were true then bakeries wouldn’t exist in America
Hypothesis doesn’t hold water
My town of 6k has the supermarket… but also there is two coffee shops that bake their own bread/pastry and a bagel house that makes all their bagels from scratch in town.
From a business perspective it doesn’t make sense to resell bread when it’s one of the cheapest ingredients to make… same with noodles, never understood why businesses buy dried noodles.
This argument is so tired. Just about every supermarket in the US has a bakery that makes fresh bread every day, all cities have local bakeries, many places have access to artisanal bread if you look for it.
And genuinely as someone who has tried multiple American bakeries, theyre disappointing as shit. Hardly any decent selection, bad crust, dry, flavorless. Its a joke to even call American bakeries real bakeries.
It would be the equivalent of calling European diners real American food. It ain't it chief.
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