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Old 02-04-2022, 11:27 AM
 
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Friends from the UK, who winter in Florida, complained how all the commercial breads here are sweet. I hadn’t noticed. I started baking bread during the pandemic and hadn’t bought bread off a shelf in two years. I did recently, and was aware of how sweet the bread was and finally understood their complaint. This was a high end bread in the grocery store, not a bakery.

 
Old 02-04-2022, 11:31 AM
 
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I did not like Dave’s Killer Bread. Too sweet, too dry, just not good flavor or texture.

LaBrea is OK only if grilled, toasted, or doctored up. Not tasty on its own.

It’s a big leap from even the most expensive supermarket versions of “artisan” bread to good homemade. Safeway used to bake a frozen parbaked version right there that was decent, but I guess those weren’t profitable enough. GONE since a few years ago. The French baguettes they now sell are just more crappy white fluff. They used to sell a slightly different baguette that tasted worlds better but it, too, disappeared.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 11:38 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikala43 View Post
Every time I looked up a recipe for whole grain bread, there were a bunch of ingredients I don't normally carry, and I have a pretty extensive pantry. Maybe it's because it was in an older breadmaker someone gave me.

Now I kinda want to try again too, but only if I don't have to order anything.
Mine contains only these ingredients: A 50:50 mix of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat flour and local Cortez Mills Bluebird Flour (it is a white bread flour known for its use in Indian frybread—sure you could substitute any bread flour for it), active dry yeast, salt, and of course water.

Comes out reliably good, even when I slightly vary the ratio of WW to white flours.

I do knead it and give it plenty of time to rest. No machines needed, just hands.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 11:41 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moguldreamer View Post
I'm a fan of Ezekiel 4:9 Bread: https://www.foodforlife.com/about_us/ezekiel-49 . Specifically the no-salt-added https://www.foodforlife.com/product/...le-grain-bread.
That’s the same company that makes Food for Life Seven Sprouted Grains bread. The Ezekiel loaves contain sprouted lentils and have a very slightly sweet taste, which FFL does not. Both are good, though, and high in good nutrients.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 11:49 AM
 
Location: Avignon, France
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Here we have baguette “ vending” machines. You can buy fresh baguettes 24/7 for about 1.00 US. A lot of bakeries ( especially the smaller ones) use cheap ingredients because baguettes are so cheap that they’d lose money using more expensive flours and such. That being said…. The bread is still magnificent!
 
Old 02-04-2022, 12:09 PM
 
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Trader Joe's has the partially baked baguettes that you finish in the oven at home. Those are pretty good.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonlady View Post
I have a bread machine and only use it to mix the dough. When it’s done, I shape it by hand and proof it in whatever baking pan I’m using then bake in the oven.

Good bakery bread here costs upwards of $5 a loaf - making my own is not only cheaper but I control the ingredients.
When I made bread, I did the same. Much better when it's baked in the oven. I once sat down and figured out the price of a single loaf--I used King Arthur white and whole wheat flour, a little rye flour, wheat germ, and a spoonful of vital wheat gluten. It came out to about $5 a loaf.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 01:42 PM
 
Location: equator
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
Trader Joe's has the partially baked baguettes that you finish in the oven at home. Those are pretty good.



When I made bread, I did the same. Much better when it's baked in the oven. I once sat down and figured out the price of a single loaf--I used King Arthur white and whole wheat flour, a little rye flour, wheat germ, and a spoonful of vital wheat gluten. It came out to about $5 a loaf.
You don't want to do those kind of calculations, lol! I once figured out the price of one gourmet hamburger made with all health-food-store ingredients. OMG, it was $6 for a 1/4 lb. burger.

I was making my own sourdough for a while and it was an interesting experiment. I had trouble with yeast since we can't get the instant packet type but just bulk. And it took ALL DAY with 25 steps involved. 4 pages of instructions, lol.

There's that simple Jenny Jones cast-iron pot bread that comes out quite well and is easy. I just had trouble again with rising due to bad yeast.

All the bread here is doughy and so soft it won't get crisp even when toasted. You can still fold it over. I hate that. In Portugal, we'd get a commercial sourdough that broke in half when folded. That made the best toast. I miss our little corner store there we could walk to every other day....

I finally relented and tried a KFC chicken sandwich here, and never mind the unpalatable under-cooked pink tiny filling, the bun was sweet! UGH. The bakeries here are just cookies and sweet stuff, no "real" bread.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 02:29 PM
 
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In NJ I buy Calandra's white Panella bread, fresh and dated at Shopriite. They have it in it's own rack by the deli counter. It is made locally in NJ, but the three Calandra's bakery outlets are too far to drive to. It gets sold pretty quickly and we can't always get it. It's a hearty white bread and tastes a bit like Italian bread. It is sliced. I like it because it is all natural and only has 4 ingredients, water, flour, salt, yeast. The funny thing is it lasts as long in the refrigerator (a few weeks) as the breads loaded with preservatives.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 03:52 PM
 
Location: Australia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jean_ji View Post
Friends from the UK, who winter in Florida, complained how all the commercial breads here are sweet. I hadn’t noticed. I started baking bread during the pandemic and hadn’t bought bread off a shelf in two years. I did recently, and was aware of how sweet the bread was and finally understood their complaint. This was a high end bread in the grocery store, not a bakery.
We tend to find a lot of American food sweeter than we are used to.

In our suburb in Sydney we have four bread shops which also sell some cakes and pastries. Then there are several pastry/coffee shops. The two major supermarkets have bake in house bread as well as packaged standard bread. We have a train station in our suburb so many people will buy bread on the way home.

Many of the bakeries are run by people of Asian background, often Vietnamese, so a lot offer Vietnamese rolls, which are really popular for lunch.
 
Old 02-04-2022, 04:20 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lepoisson View Post
In most European countries and even Mexico, there are bakeries on just about every corner that sell amazing bread. Bread is a staple in most of these countries, so I guess that's why there are so many bakeries. In the US, bakeries are a rarity. The ones that do exist mostly sell cakes.

I guess if you ask most Americans what type of bread they eat, they'll say something like Wonder sandwich bread. Everyone else ends up buying a more gourmet sliced sandwich bread like whole wheat. A small minority of people buy bakery made breads at stores like Whole Foods. In most places across the US, this is about as close as you can get to European bread.

So my question is why is it so hard to find good bread in the US? I previously lived in Chicago which is one of the biggest cities in the country, and even there, I could only find a handful of bakeries that I thought had decent bread. And those bakeries despite charging high prices for bread were no comparison to the type of bread that you can get on just about every corner in Paris.

Is it because bread just isn't a staple in most American households? Or is it just a cultural or habit thing? Most Americans are used to eating white sandwich bread so maybe a bakery making European style bread wouldn't stay in business?
You must live in an area that is very different from here. Lots of wonderful bread bakeries near me.
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