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Manhattan is a lot like Paris. Both have small kitchens and small kitchen appliances. Residents of both cities tend to shop more frequently because storage is low and most don't have cars. You have to walk and carry your shopping bags on public transportation. Both have "continental shopping" habits.
I am fortunate that I live in bagel land and literally near close to thousands of bakeries from all different ethnicities. I have 4 of them 2 blocks from my house and then dozens more within a ten minute drive-Middle Eastern, Kosher Jewish (with their signature Raisin Pumpernickel bread), Peruvian, Italian, German, Columbian, Haitian (not too much bread in this one-more pastry and cakes), Greek, and Polish. Then, with a short bus/train ride I can find authentic French bakeries with French owners/bakers (there's a sizable French population here), Danish bakeries, Swedish bakeries, Spanish bakeries, fake French bakeries owned by Koreans (Paris Baguette), more Middle-Eastern bakeries from a variety of North African and Middle Eastern countries and even "Asian bakeries" such as Vietnamese and Korean, not to mention bakeries specializing in breads from all over Latin America. The reason that most don't taste good is the limitation to using American ingredients-not just the flour, but the eggs, the milk, the butter. It's just not the same as in Europe. I haven't been to Canada in a few years, but even there, unless it's changed, the food tasted better. After I ate a "dur" (hard boiled egg) in Paris one time, I asked why do the eggs in Paris taste so much better than in the States even if they are just boiled. Bakeries, even with the best recipes, are only as good as the ingredients. Even in the big food courts like Le District, Little Spain, and EatItaly, the bread is not the same. The focaccia here is inferior to the ones found in Europe and doesn't look the same, even with regional Italian differences.
In Paris, a lot of bakers are of North African descent.
Best baguette of Paris 2021 : Makram AKROUT, (12th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2020 : Taieb SAHAL (17th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2019 : Fabrice LEROY (12th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2018 : Mahmoud M'SEDDI (14th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2017 : Sami BOUATTOUR (13th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2016 : Michael REYDELET and FLORIAN CHARLES (6th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2015 : Djibril BODIAN (18th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2014 : Antonio TEIXEIRA (14th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2013 : Ridha KHADHER (14th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2012 : Sébastien MAUVIEUX (18th arrondissement)
Best baguette 2011 : Pascal BARILLON (18th arrondissement).
In the last decade 5 of the 11 best baguette laureate were owned by people of North African descent.
Note that Djibril Bodian (Senegalese descent) and Antonio Teixeira (Portuguese descent) won this price twice.
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But Whole Foods and Sprouts offer some pretty good breads. I think they may get some of their "artisanal" breads from the same source. Maybe they have the raw dough or raw loaves delivered, then they bake them in their own ovens, to make it look like the bread is made on-site.
The last time that I tried to buy a load of rye bread at Sprouts, the loaf that I picked off of the shelf was ice cold like it was shipped frozen. Very disappointing.
When I go to the store every day for fresh stuff I call it continental shopping like many people have and still do. I don't give a damn what century or year it is.
If you don't believe it was ever true just move along.
It's interesting, that you (or someone) called it "continental shopping". In Germany, there are social worker type people, who come into the home and instruct women (traditionally the homemaker role) on how to shop efficiently, and how to plan meals, so so that you don't waste time with shopping too often, and you don't let food go to waste. There's a whole "efficient homemaking" ethos there. It's the antithesis of shopping every day or twice/day. So I'm not sure whose continent you're referring to.
I don’t call it “continental shopping” but I often shop that way. The Portuguese bakery is 1.1 miles from my house. If I want bread, I buy bread baked that morning. The upscale deli-market in my village gets artisanal bread in every morning. I’m next to the largest fishing port in the country. If I am making fish for dinner, I buy it that day. Like bread, the quality of fish degrades quickly. In season, the same with produce. Corn has to be picked that morning, for example.
It doesn’t mean I don’t do the quartermaster thing for staples. I have the 20 rolls of toilet paper and the 10 rolls of paper towels. I have lots of canned goods. I only do the daily forage thing for foods that are truly better when purchased and eaten the same day.
Circling back to bread, we didn’t eat Wonder Bread when I was a kid in the 1960s. We ate local bakery bread. I’m from a heavily Portuguese/Azores Islands area so bread is Portuguese rolls and Portuguese bread. The dough is similar to Italian bread but there’s more moisture in the oven so a bit more of a crust than most pizza oven Italian bread I have eaten. There were always other bakeries a bit farther away. Enough of a French Canadian population that I could always get a pretty good approximation to a baguette. A German bakery. The grocery store had factory bread but that’s not what I ate.
I suspect that was true anywhere with a large ethnic population. You had critical mass to support bakeries like in your home country. Bagels, for example. I’m in bagel purgatory. I love when I’m in Montreal or NYC with the large Jewish population where I can get a real bagel right out of the oven.
We have a multitude of stores where I live that sell fresh baked bread. Some are mainly bread specific, while others are more sweet treat specific and also sell fresh baked bread. I love pumpernickel and sourdough breads, only the fresh baked kind, and have no trouble finding it, but totally agree that fresh baked bread is not a staple in this country like it is in Europe.
I find this response very strange. "We" know? Who is "we"? I don't eat the way the poster indicated; my extended family doesn't eat that way; my friends don't eat that way. Frankly, it just sounds like typical anti-American propaganda.
Can one manage to eat nothing but utter crap in the US? Of course. That doesn't mean utter crap is the "American diet."
Yeah, and I eat practically vegetarian... so it doesn't apply to me either.
But the US is pretty well known as having a hugely overweight diet, medical community uses SAD (Standard American Diet), the US also has a large percentage of population with preventable diseases like diabetes, etc.
In the United States, poor diet was once associated with undernutrition. Today it is more often associated with excess, particularly excesses in calories, saturated fats, trans fats, added sugars, and sodium (DGAC, 2010). The poor diets and sedentary lifestyles of the American public have led to high rates of obesity, overweight, and diet-related chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancer (HHS/USDA, 2005a). It has been estimated that poor diet quality and physical inactivity contributed to approximately 16.6 percent of U.S. deaths in 2000, compared to 14 percent in 1990 (Mokdad et al., 2004).
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209844/
The US obesity prevalence was 42.4% in 2017 – 2018.
From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.
Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Fast Facts
According to 2017–2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
Nearly 1 in 3 adults (30.7%) are overweight.2
More than 2 in 5 adults (42.4%) have obesity.2
About 1 in 11 adults (9.2%) have severe obesity.2
According to 2017–2018 NHANES data
About 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 (16.1%) are overweight.3
Almost 1 in 5 children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 (19.3%) have obesity.3
About 1 in 16 children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 (6.1%) have severe obesity.3
Now back to finding good bread in the US!!!!! BTW, DH will be making me rustic whole wheat seed bread until his sourdough starter is "revived", I had to order rye flour from Amazon.
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