For better or worse, a lot of Americans like fluffy white bread that’s loaded with preservatives to give it a long shelf life. That’s what they ate as kids & they’ve never branched out.
I’m not defending US mass market bread, but I do think it’s largely a matter of differing tastes and values. Your comment (and much of this thread) comes off as “I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you”.
So yeah, it’s flame-baity & perhaps even unkind. Even if you’re right. A gentle reminder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21490714
If supermarkets don't offer good products, that may also be a discussion worth having.
> I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you
But this critique doesn't address why the price is higher. You can call it "values" if you want but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price and shoppers that likely don't know they have other choices/are getting a worse product.
> So yeah, it’s flame-baity & perhaps even unkind.
I feel like attempting to place words into my mouth ("why they suck and why we’re better than you") that don't remotely match my tone or substance of my post and then calling it "unkind" is a much larger departure from expected decorum than anything I actually posted above.
To quote the site's guidelines:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Re-stated my argument in a much more negative and judgemental way then attacking it doesn't feel like a good faith argument or trying to argue the strongest interpretation but YMMV.
Every major supermarket I've ever been to in the US and Canada has a million styles of bread, including many freshly baked right there at the store.
>but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price
Do you have evidence for lower quality, outside of the roundly debunked "shelf life" argument? Or are these your preferences?
What would you consider objectively lower quality anyway? Is use of preservatives and corn syrup lower quality, or is that a preference for shelf life and sweets? Is a McDonalds burger low quality or is that just preference? I can take you to a generic bakery in my old rural small town in Germany where the 25-cent pretzel would blow the socks off any pretzel you can find for any price in any store in the US, but maybe you'd call that preference.
Reminds me of coffee discussions. “Peet’s is good coffee!”, “No it’s shit, you don’t know good coffee!”, “You just have an unsophisticated palate!”.
If your "values" are medically unhealthy... I'll let you draw your own conclusions ;-)
So yeah, there's that thing again where they don't know that better is possible.
P.S. This advice was hyper-local (near Boston). Just a few miles away, I'm sure there are great Armenian bakeries and I would have suggested those. In some other city, who even knows? Local patterns vary, but there always seems to be someone filling this niche.
But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-produced) bread daily, and a lot of grocery stores have an in-house bakery as well nowadays if you want to go super fancy. (I'm sure that's a logistical optimization as well, that is, dough or its components are easier to transport than ready-made bread, especially because some (like croissants) are very fragile).
From my experience, Americans often do grocery once every couple of weeks, because the super market is usually a non-trivial drive away.
I can see how a lot of their foods developed to accommodate that shopping cycle, and forced preservatives that make things last those 2-3 weeks while compromising on freshness and taste.
Overwhelming majority of Americans live less than 20 minutes drive from a proper grocery story (i.e. not a gas station convenience store), and most probably live 10 minutes drive. In my metropolitan area of 4 million, I can't think of a place that's more than 10 minutes from a large supermarket.
Americans don't do grocery shopping very often simply because it's such a waste of time: there are 5 large supermarkets (two Safeways, one QFC, one Whole Foods and one local chain) 5 minutes drive from my home, and there's also Costco 10 minutes drive. Despite that, I go grocery shopping once a week, because it usually takes an hour. Doing this more often would replace one hour-long trip with three 45 minutes trip. Since the drive is only 5 minutes, living literally next to them wouldn't change my habits much.
Also, let me assure you that most Europeans don't live in 5 minutes walking distance from grocery stores, so the travel time here is not what makes the habits different.
And even though we have a selection 2 to 3 stores in 20 minutes drive ( one we could walk to if we chose to forego convenience of one trip a week ), I remember living in locations where access was not as simple.
The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside.
But the point being is that some of the couchsurfers would hilariously laugh at the strangeness of having bread that isn't white fluffy toast. I got that reaction from Brits and South Americans. The French would appreciate it and the cheese choices with it.
The UK is an interesting little phenomenon IMHO. Not quite the US but also not quite Europe. In a lot of ways more similar to the US(not always in a bad way). You also get plenty of HFCS there
FWIW brown bread in the UK has been "a thing" since well before I was born, so there there is not just an expectation for white.
I would wager that the typical couch surfer is the sort of person who as well as focusing on value on where they choose to sleep probably also subsists on fairly cheap basic foods.
Certainly in the past decade or two the UK you'll see a lot more variety in what you can get even in convenience stores in London: white, brown, granary, soda, rye, sourdough, bagels, barbari, boule brioche, baguette, challa, chapati, ciabatta - you name it. It all seems to get sold and presumably eaten. Not saying it is any good of particularly authentic or "correct" but there is a lot of variety in the most common of shops.
I don’t recognise your statement on most bread being made for a toaster.
Edit: admittedly not as good as some other European countries.
So if the Polish baseline is super fancy for NL, NL is better than UK and UK baseline is artisanal US bread, I wonder what baseline US bread looks like. It's made of sponge and sugar?
Yes, pretty much. It’s very bad.
It’s popular to characterize American stuff as “bad,” but America is a huge country.
Tortillas in France are pretty terrible and good luck finding a Jalapeño or a Habenero, but in any grocery store in the US, I can find high quality ingredients to make almost anything. Try finding a spice in the average French grocery store any stronger than “hot” Paprika.
These “other countries are better than the US” arguments are ridiculous. In the US, you have access to pretty much anything you want. Mostly not true in many European countries and definitely not true outside the capitals.
Outside of New York City area, I wouldn't think of doing groceries more than once a week. The place I've lived at are all terrible in terms of how grocery stores are walkable.
I'm more leery of manufactured breads that keep forever.
Once you get into the swing of it, you can whittle it down to 10 minutes of preparation in the morning, set it on automatic timer, and have fresh, hot bread waiting for you when you get home from work. Just make sure the yeast is in a pile on top so that it stays dry during the day.
(in case anybody wonders what that is, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_machine)
(Source, traveling around Europe now, with recent experience of French, Portuguese, and Spanish grocery stores)
https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product-finder?category=ecce-...
Nothing local has a crumb anything like https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product/multi-grain-boule/
Good chocolate is even rarer. I’m from belgium and chocolate abroad is almost always disappointing. Most of the time if you look at the composition it wouldn’t actually be allowed to even call it chocolate when selling it in belgium.
After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French bread (which in my opinion is world class). But it is very notable that it has a 7~10 shelf life, not one month like other supermarket breads, is actually soft, and not overly sweet.
It is kind of unfortunately that in the US basically passable bread is called "Artesano" and earns a price premium. Many living in the US haven't had the opportunity to try elsewhere to compare. The strangest thing about this is that you'd expect the US's bread to be much cheaper (given the quality reduction) but that wasn't at all my experience (in fact fresher bread in Europe was substantially cheaper than long-shelf-life-bagged bread in the US).