I’ve lived in the USA for a while now and I don’t think I’ve ever eaten bread I enjoyed. Is it just my state? Is it bread in every country?? idk. I just want some good bread
Quit buying the nasty plastic wrapped garbage in the middle of the store and buy your bread from the bakery. It’s cheaper that way.
Cheaper???
Great value bread is $2 a loaf. My bakery charges $8.
I mean, I still buy my bread from the bakery, but it isn’t a price thing.
Bread is good here. I’ve heard many things taste weird in the USA due to added corn syrup rather than sugar cane sugar. Maybe that’s in the bread too?
The bread is foamy, can that be from corn syrup?
I’m guessing like many other packaged, mass-produced food in the US, bread is also full of preservatives that makes it taste like shit.
Bread should be normally edible for about a week to 10 days, depending on the method the dough was prepared. If you buy bread that says it expires in a month or more, then it’s probably filled with additives.
You know, making your own bread isn’t that hard. It takes like 20 minutes of actual work and a few hours of waiting. If you want to taste good bread then make it. Here’s a recipe I use often (mediterranean bread from my home country):
For the starter mix:
- 160 grams strong (bread) flour
- 80 grams wholemeal flour
- 1/2 tsp dry yeast
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 415 grams water at room temperature
For the dough:
- 320 grams strong (bread) flour
- 40 grams wholemeal flour
- 1 tsp dry yeast
- (1 tsp mahleb seeds crushed)
- (1/2 tsp mastic seeds crushed)
- (1 tsp aniseeds)
- ½ Tbsp salt
- 1 Tbsp olive oil to coat the proofing bowl
Instructions:
Put all the ingredients for the starter mixture in a deep bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat the mixture with a wire until it becomes a thick-ish batter. Set aside.
In another deep bowl, mix well all the dry ingredients for the dough (not the olive oil). Important: Do not let the salt come into direct contact with the yeast because it will lose its properties. Just add the yeast first, mix and then add the salt.
Combine the two mixtures: With the help of a spoon, spread the dry flour mixture over the surface of the starter mixture. Add spoonfuls, without stirring, until the entire surface of the starter is covered.
DO NOT MIX the two mixtures. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it on the kitchen counter for 2-4 hours. The starter will rise through the dry ingredients and at places, may penetrate through.
To make the dough, combine the two mixtures together. You can use a stand mixer (best option) with the dough hook. Knead very well, for at least 10 minutes until it becomes an elastic dough. If you don’t have a mixer, combine the ingredients with a wooden spoon and then knead by hand. The finished dough will be soft and slightly wet.
Shape the dough into a ball and place it in the oiled proofing bowl. Turn it upside down and around until the olive oil covers the entire surface. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for one to two hours, until it doubles in volume. At this stage you can put the dough in the fridge and make the bread the next day. That would make the bread even tastier. In this case, thaw it for 1 hour before proceeding to the next stage. Preheat the oven to 240° degrees at least one hour before baking the bread. Shape the dough (it will deflate but will rise again later) into an oblong or round shape.
(Mix the coating ingredients into a small bowl and spread all-over the bread.)
With a large knife or a dough scraper, cut the bread all the way through at 5-6 cm intervals. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and let it rise again for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until it becomes 1 ½ times its size.
Bake at 240° C for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 200°C and bake for another 20 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack.
Resist cutting a piece while it’s too hot since the bread will continue to cook while it cools. Let it rest first for about 1 hour. Enjoy!
Note: the ingredients in brackets are the coating mixture. If you dont find them or dont want to use them, it’s fine. You can also use alternative types of seeds, like sesame or crushed pistacchios. If you want to experiment, you can try adding less intense, more tasty nuts in the dough.
Your first 1-2 attempts will likely fail if you are not patient or don’t know how to knead. But it’s real easy to figure it out and do good bread with minimal effort.
I love my communist forum bread recipes <3
Sugar and fat are preservatives that give bread shelf life. Traditional bread molds in a week or less. A lot of US bread is also on a short rising, which requires less time and labor, but it means the yeast doesn’t have as much time to eat up the gluten, which leads to digestion problems for some people.
I’ve found that the bread and produce in Europe is just better. Likely because the people expect quality food and there is a very long history of artisanal food production.
In the US, we’re mostly concerned with getting a good deal. What’s the largest/most apple I can buy for the price? Can I get this “whole wheat” loaf on a 2-for-1 deal? Nevermind that the produce is tasteless and the bread is filled with sugar.
Cheap bread will never taste good. That’s why it’s cheap.
If you can shell out more money you can usually find better versions of everything except maybe fruit. I don’t know why but fruit tastes nasty now, unlike 15-20 years ago.
Cheap bread in NZ and Ireland is acceptable IME. In the US it’s sweet and nasty with a weird texture… even expensive bread my odds have been much worse than a coin flip in the US. Evidence in this thread (and every time I’ve asked a similar question) shows that USAians just think it’s normal, and they get defensive about it, too.
How much is cheap? I bought a $6 large loaf (20 oz) and it was just as bland as anything else :(
Personally I find store bought corn tortillas toasted on the comal have a more acceptable quality compared to your typical grocery store bread
$6 for bread??? where tf you shopping that’s insane 😭
i guess it depends on what kind of bread it is as well
Mostly because of soil depletion, I’d expect. The soil has been farmed so much in the last hundred years or more, that fruit and veg are literally lower in nutrients (and thus flavour) than in the past.
You can get good bread, but only if you live in a large diverse city. Back when I lived in the US, I was in LA, and the grocery stores always had shitty bread unless you went to a rich people store like Trader Joe’s, but the small bakeries that focus on one country (Russian bakeries, Armenian bakeries, etc.) usually had amazing bread.
There exists several ethnic groceries and bakeries in my state. They do tend to be in the larger cities/towns, but my state’s cities are quite small. I tend to go to the Mexican, Asian, Eastern European, African, and Indian groceries in my area, which is pretty diverse for what it’s worth. The people running these stores are super sweet. One of the Eastern European places gave me a bunch of European candy for free because the guy was excited about my interest in it. It was such a wholesome experience. This kind of thing happened to me several times in several of these stores, too.
That makes sense. I’ve rarely been in smaller cities and towns in the US, and the ones I had been to only have a Walmart and a McDonald’s, so I’ve never seen those types of places in the smaller places in the US, but it’s really good to hear that they exist there.
As a European, I’d say pretty terrible. BUT only from my limited exposure of about 5 holidays over 15 years
I was shocked that the bread was sweet for some reason
French brioche is also sweet. Though Lye brioche sticks with aged cheddar are bomb.
Brioche is inherently sweet bread, closer to a pastry than actual bread. It’s no closer to bread than a croissant, in term of how people eat it.
Yeah lol, they add sugar to everything because it increases sales by making people crave the product
We got many kinds not just normal bread including white bread, potato bread and rye bread. I like Martin’s Potato Bread it is slightly more expensive, but better quality then cheaper ones like Wonder Bread. There is also artisan bread which is better quality, than most American breads, but generally have a shorter shelf life to other American breads and are more expensive.
I’ve been making rye bread at home. Just a few ingredients and a little time and it’s very good. I am not a baker but there are so many easy to follow recipes.
You just gotta make your own. The bread we got at stores is only good as toast imo
Not even good as toast really because of the sugar content. When I moved out of the US, I could still buy the same type of sliced bread for toast, but it no longer tasted like I was eating a cake.
Mass produced bread is a blot on humanity
Do you live in a food desert? There are hundreds of different kinds of bread in the world, many of which are available in the US, and most of them aren’t pan-formed, sliced sandwich bread.
The quality of all of our food is bad. It’s practically poison and highly processed sugarslop. We have poor regulations, even compared to Europe, and it’s been getting worse.
You need to go to an artisanal bakery for proper bread in the US or Canada. The stuff in big stores isn’t even raised properly. They whip air into it and add yeast as a flavouring. I make sourdough at home. More work but it’s cheaper and so much better.
