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Bread is Broken
- nawitus 11y agoI feel pretty lucky to have access to whole-grain rye bread[1] here in Finland. 1. http://www.linkosuo.fi/uploads/images/tuotekuvat/240%20musta%20evas.png http://www.linkosuo.fi/uploads/images/tuotekuvat/240%20musta...
- merpnderp 11y agoInteresting article that made me incredibly hungry for my grandmother's bread.
- venomsnake 11y agoCheck no knead bread. Absurdly easy to make, foolproof, tastes like heaven (especially SeriousEats improved version)
- pakled_engineer 11y agoI buy Khorasan whole kernels from a local farm and hand mill it as needed into my own flour to make east african chapatis everyday, never will go back to zero nutrient, flavorless bleached flour in supermarkets. Takes me about 30mins, I roll it in an omlette they call a 'rolex' in Africa for breakfast and sometimes make more for dinner/curries. The rolex fills me all day no carb sugar burnout like I used to get with store bought bread.
- Turing_Machine 11y agoLess flavorful, perhaps. "Zero nutrient", no way. A 125 gram serving of commercial enriched white flour contains about 95 grams of carbohydrates, about 13 grams of protein, and about 1 gram of fat = 109 grams. All of those things are nutrients (about three grams of the carbs are in the form of indigestible dietary fiber, which technically isn't a nutrient, but is still good to have). In addition, it has 65% of the DV of thiamin, 57% of the DV of folate, 36% of the DV of riboflavin, 32% of the DV of iron, and several other good things.
- blacksmith_tb 11y agoIf only the Times had someone (like, say, an editor?) to make similar points. Nearly all the criticisms of 'mainstream' wheat in their article amount to subjective praise of the magical goodness of obscure local strains. I'm sure they're delicious, but I would like to see some real research on just how bowdlerized typical wheat has become. Not to mention that while I like to bake my own bread, and I have the time to do so (occasionally), millions of people will have to settle for buying their bread from a grocery store.
- xenihn 11y agoWhat's the best way to find a local farm to buy whole kernels from? I'm assuming I won't find anything on Yelp...I'm also assuming there's bound to be something within a 1-2 hour drive in Southern California.
- coldcode 11y agoI used to get bread from a old school French baker in downtown Dallas of all places. I don't know where he gets his wheat (he mills it himself) but the bread was like nothing I've ever eaten. One time I ate half a loaf for dinner with nothing on it at all, it's so tasty.
- samtimalsina 11y agoYou need to tell us the place!
- coldcode 11y agoVillage Baking Co 5531 E University Blvd, Dallas, TX 75206
- stevesearer 11y agoNot to discount what you're saying as I'm sure the bread was very good, but I've been thinking about whether knowing a bit more about the process and story behind food products helps enhance the experience. So in this case, knowing that he mills it himself and that he seems to use old school methods, in addition to just baking great bread is a recipe for a better bread experience than that of simply eating great bread without knowing the story.
- boxy310 11y agoI went to Germany this past summer and bought amazing gas-station sandwiches for 4 euros apiece, with great quality meat, cheese, and bread. I came back to America and bought a Starbucks sandwich for $12 and almost threw it out, it was so bad in comparison. Even if you have neutral perceptions of sandwiches you will definitely taste the difference between American bread and European bread.
- nether 11y agoWow, that's 4x the price of Starbucks sandwiches where I live. Must be the same ones serving the $6 coffees (mine are $1.30).
- iamsohungry 11y agoAs an aside, consumption of bread is strongly correlated with tooth decay. Whole wheat has only a slightly smaller correlation.
- asavadatti 11y agoI trust your word on this iamsohungry. Seriously though, do you know how much is safe?
- gre 11y agoCan't you just brush your teeth afterwards?
- sitharus 11y agoThat's actually worse for you, you should wait at least an hour after eating before you brush. The action of brushing displaces the enamel rebuilding agents in your saliva. Quick reference: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/really-never-brush-your-teeth-immediately-after-a-meal/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/really-never-brush-...
- Retra 11y agoBest thing to do is always drink lots of water.
- cwbrandsma 11y agoI'm a food cynic: any food will be branded as bad for you given enough scrutiny. All that does is make it harder to discern between foods that are slightly/possibly unhealthy and foods that are just actually bad for you. (my mother still believes that eggs are bad for you because they contain so much cholesterol)
- Dirlewanger 11y agoEh, maybe modern processed bread that has sugar in it. Questionable otherwise, unless you have a source.
- bad_user 11y agoIronically, sliced bread is the worst. Normal bread can get stale, dry and hard. But packaged sliced bread is much less perishable. I've seen sliced bread having the same texture and taste after a whole week of lying on a kitchen countertop. And when you read the ingredients on its packaging, you begin to understand why, as sliced bread is subject to the techniques of processed foods such as the addition of preservatives, antioxidants, stabilizers, anti-caking agents, or packaging gases, in addition to that bread being bleached, blanched, stripped of nutrients and with added sugar to make it taste better and because high-fructose corn syrup is so cheap, so why not. In addition sliced bread is subject to every health-related fad in existence. Low carb bread? Sure. Bread with Omega-3? Of course. Basically the packaged substance in super-markets is anything but bread, then we wonder why our meals don't satisfy us and why we get fat.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- HelloMcFly 11y agoIt's not all bad. Dave's Killer Bread is decent when it comes to ingredients. Even so, I've moved almost exclusively to baking my own.
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoBut on the flip side it must be very good for the shareholders.
- angdis 11y agoOn the other hand most cities have at least some "real" bakeries where you can get a nice loaf of bread with proper crumb and flavor. Most supermarket bread is virtually inedible to folks that have a taste for good bread. Aside from the insane ingredient list, the sickly softness of it and the lack of any decent crust and crumb makes me wonder what market forces influenced industrial bread makers. How can anyone that has tasted a traditional loaf of freshly baked bread stand for that stuff in the supermarket?
- GFischer 11y ago
- emptyflask 11y agoAbout a year ago I learned how to bake a good sourdough loaf, and have been doing it about once every week. It's not exactly dense, but it does seem to be much more substantial than mass-produced squishy bread. A single buttered slice of sourdough toast is incredibly delicious, and is often all I need for breakfast. Though it's tempting to eat half a loaf right after baking... Oh, and the same dough makes a damn good pizza. (http://stellaculinary.com/recipes/70-hydration-sourdough-boule http://stellaculinary.com/recipes/70-hydration-sourdough-bou...)
- thrownaway2424 11y agoI appreciate all the do-it-yourself fervor on this thread but baking seems like a decent application of the principle of economic specialization. I, for one, enjoy visiting my local bakery every few days, and they do a better job than I will ever do even if I quit my job and practice baking full-time, which I'm not planning to do.
- jandrese 11y agoThe thing is, homemade bread ends up being a lot tastier than store bought if your only store bought options are big mass produced soft breads. The crust especially suffers on packaged breads. You don't even need fancypants flour. Just an oven and a few minutes to prepare it (plus rise time and bake time of course). I prefer to do a half and half mix of wheat and bread flour, but everybody is free to do what they like. You can get good bread at bakeries, but I find that they tend to way overcharge for it.
- 542458 11y agoIf you're in Canada even all-purpose flour will work OK, since Canadian flour has a higher gluten content.
- hugh4 11y agoHow much can they really charge that makes it worth spending ten minutes kneading, ten minutes washing your hands and the next two days pulling out arm hairs with caked on dough? That's my experience with bread making anyway. No matter what bread I buy, bread isn't a major part of my weekly budget.
- marcosdumay 11y agoI've found that a 2 minutes preparation for a bread machine and a 3 minute cleaning is much cheaper than a 15 minutes walk into a bakery. But then, I just reduce the number of walkings by buying lots of breads every time I go there, and freezing them afterwards. Still less time consuming than using the machine - but the bread tastes worse.
- acaloiar 11y agoThis headline is broken. And so is every headline that depends upon the "X is Broken" trope.
- k__ 11y agoDon't hate. But I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't take the chance to make a "Bread Considered Harmful" headline. Also: https://i.4cdn.org/fit/1446067701357.png https://i.4cdn.org/fit/1446067701357.png
- trhway 11y agosupermarket white bread, beside all other strange ingredients, has key technological difference from "normal" bread - the bottom-line industrial optimization favors adding more yeast and sugar for faster rise instead of longer rise with less yeast and sugar for "normal" bread, and as the result in the "normal" bread this lesser amounts are processed more completely. The longer process in the "normal" bread also allows for more carbohydrates (starch) from the flour to be converted into sugars and be processed by the yeast. (i did my one summer time at a completely manual bakery 25 year ago in USSR - it was among the best bread i ever tasted, and we did have relative shortage of yeast and sugar, so we used less of it with warmer water and let it a bit more time to rise) On practical note - here in SV the "German/Bavarian" or "Russian" breads or the bread from Acme bakeries seem pretty ok.
- sbierwagen 11y agoThis article felt incredibly familiar, and it turns out I've read pretty much the same article written about the same place, three months ago: http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/1/stephen-jones-and-wsu-s-bread-lab-are-designing-a-whole-wheat-tortilla-for-chipotle http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/1/stephen-jones-an...
- bluedino 11y agoIt's not just bread, it's other wheat products as well. Take a tortilla, for example. Taco Bell and Walmart have the worst of the worst. Chipotle's tortillas aren't much better, they still have that 'soapy' taste. Visit a local Mexican bakery (panadería) and buy a package of fresh-made tortillas and you'll be amazed at the difference. This expands to every other bread you think of. Pita, paratha, bagels...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- multinglets 11y agoI've been tracking what I eat for a while, and one thing I've noticed is that bread makes me hungrier and I feel worse. I've completely dropped bread, and my life has improved dramatically.
- lutorm 11y agoI've been making my own bread from http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutionizes/dp/1250018285/ref=sr_1_1 http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutioni... and it's better than any of the breads I can buy around here. I'd be interested in seeing how much difference non-industrial flour would make. Contrary to what someone said, I think bread is not a case where specialization pays off. Bread needs to be fresh, and it will basically take me longer to buy a loaf (if I could actually find a decent one) than to throw together one in the kitchen while I'm working on something else. Not to mention that my half-assed bread, fresh, is better than the most awesome bread in existence if it's a day old. Hawaii is a terrible environment for bread, the crust is gone after a few hours due to the humidity.