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It's expensive to make good bread. Not in terms of raw materials, but in terms of labor. A machine cannot make a quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it

It's expensive to make good bread. Not in terms of raw materials, but in terms of labor. A machine cannot make a quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it and let it ride with human hands. There is also a large cost in the right-on-time delivery of "good" bread. There is still quality bread sold at my grocery store, but that kind of bread isn't a staple because people don't want to go to the grocery store every other day when their non-stabilized bread gets eaten, goes stale, or goes moldy. I am defending "bad" bread because no one ever does, and it's really not comparable to "real" bread because the uses are different. It's cheaper, last much longer, and is better suited for sandwiches and toast because of the square shape.

GordonS 6y ago
I'm not hating on cheap bread. You can find cheap, basic batch loaves anywhere in the western world - but the crap I found in the US was the worst. It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to have lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it, and it doesn't have to have 20+ ingredients.
- mettamage 6y ago
  > It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to have lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it This is my experience as well.
reitzensteinm 6y ago
I haven't tried American bread, but Australian is terrible compared to what you can get for little more than 1€ in Germany. Presumably that's made without human involvement in each loaf.
tom_mellior 6y ago
> A machine cannot make a quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it and let it ride with human hands. Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with machine kneading, many European countries (but not all!) manage to produce quality loaves at an industrial scale. Can a good baker produce even better bread in small batches? Almost certainly yes. But even there I'm not convinced that it's the kneading specifically, as opposed to general attention to the whole process.

GordonS 6y ago

I'm not hating on cheap bread. You can find cheap, basic batch loaves anywhere in the western world - but the crap I found in the US was the worst. It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to have lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it, and it doesn't have to have 20+ ingredients.

mettamage 6y ago
> It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to have lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it This is my experience as well.

reitzensteinm 6y ago

I haven't tried American bread, but Australian is terrible compared to what you can get for little more than 1€ in Germany. Presumably that's made without human involvement in each loaf.

tom_mellior 6y ago

> A machine cannot make a quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it and let it ride with human hands. Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with machine kneading, many European countries (but not all!) manage to produce quality loaves at an industrial scale. Can a good baker produce even better bread in small batches? Almost certainly yes. But even there I'm not convinced that it's the kneading specifically, as opposed to general attention to the whole process.