Hacker News Reader

You’re shopping at the wrong places. There is good bread out there.

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

> “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”.

If your "values" are medically unhealthy... I'll let you draw your own conclusions ;-)

I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US. So while I may be shopping in the "wrong" places in the US that doesn't really detract from my overarching point. A lot of people, in both areas, buy their bread at supermarkets.

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.

>I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US

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?

A million styles of bad bread in comparison to any one of the cheap loaves available in a German market. In many major US supermarkets, the freshly baked product is worse than the stale packaged product. Try it at your local albertsons or walmart. It's acceptable if you eat it warm and after that you can use it as a sponge to soak up spills. The $7 artisan whatever quarter of a loaf at Whole Foods is maybe in the same ballpark as what you find in Germany and you still have to be lucky enough to get it fresh. The normal packaged rectangular bread loaves people buy in the US are what we called "toaster bread" in Europe (bread to only be eaten toasted).

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.

I love how long the bread argument thread is getting.

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!”.

My experience (Germany) is different: You can't get a good bread in super markets here. Heck you can't even get a good bread at specialized bakeries (with some very rare exceptions). I bake my own bread as a result.

Are you comparing this to the US or some other country, or just broadly speaking? I have had better breads than Germany in other countries, and I've had bad supermarket breads in Germany, so I can agree there, but when comparing to the US it's like comparing apples to sawdust.

In a HN thread about bread some time ago, someone living in California protested that one could get top quality European style bread basically everywhere. I looked it up and the bread they recommended comes from a single industrial bakery that supplies the whole state of California.

So yeah, there's that thing again where they don't know that better is possible.

Industrial bakers can’t make good bread?

Good but not great, because that's what they choose to do. Plus there's the shipping delay and its effect on freshness.

I had a colleague who came over from Norway - not known as a center of culinary excellence - and complained about the bread. I suggested that he should find a Jewish or Italian bakery, which he did, and then he was happy. It kind of sucks that decent bread is only available here in specialty stores and not alongside everything else in the grocery store, but that's how it is.

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.

It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster.

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).

I bought some bread from Safeway earlier this year in August. I called the number on the package when the bread started to mould within four days of me buying it.

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.

Here in the Netherlands I believe bread also starts to mould after four days. My solution is to have a stockpile in the freezer.

That's not a sign of bad bread. If you bake your own bread, you may find it also molds in 4 days, depending on your climate and how you store it.

I'm more leery of manufactured breads that keep forever.

Most supermarkets in the UK have in store bakeries. Buying fresh, good quality bread, including sourdough, etc. is easy.

I don’t recognise your statement on most bread being made for a toaster.

Edit: admittedly not as good as some other European countries.

Life hack: if you want fresh yeast in the UK go to Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s bakery counters, they’ll sell you it by weight.

Until quite recently (five years ago) they didn't charge you for it. It's only a few pence though.

In Poland the in-house bakery in a grocery store is the cheap and convenient way to get bread if you can't be bothered to get actual quality (not made from deeply frozen dough).

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?

It's made of sponge and sugar?

Yes, pretty much. It’s very bad.

"Better Bread Starts with a Sponge" https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/better-bread-s...

Good grief. What kind of bread are you buying? I can find terrible bread in Europe too. There is a lot of great bread in the US. People, in these discussions like to take the very worst example of dollar-store bread and compare it to a dedicated boulangerie in Paris, however French supermarket sandwich bread can be just as terrible as the American equivalent. But go to an American bakery and the bread is really good.

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.

I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very close to my place.

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

I didn't know we had HFCS in the UK. What products contain it?

Are you sure things have HFCS in the U.K.? What’s it labelled as? I often look at ingredients and only ever notice “sugar” ie. sucrose

I have never seen high fructose corn syrup in the UK. There is a bunch of chat right now about not watering down our food (and other) standards to allow US-quality food here after/if Brexit happens.

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 might be reaching a bit (also a tangent), but a lot of US's problems are rooted in their urban design and sprawl.

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.

I think you are right. My individual situation is different, but it may just be an exception that tests the rule.

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.

> From my experience, Americans often do grocery once every couple of weeks, because the super market is usually a non-trivial drive away.

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.

Get a Zojirushi brand bread maker, buy your grains off Amazon, and bake your own bread. It's really the only way in the Americas...

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.

Maybe you should consider importing a consumer bread making machine from europe :)

(in case anybody wonders what that is, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_machine)

You say this like you don't trip over bagged bread in every supermarket in Europe. Including some places that have essentially crustless white bread slices in a bag.

(Source, traveling around Europe now, with recent experience of French, Portuguese, and Spanish grocery stores)

The trick to finding real bread in the U.S. is to skip the “bread aisle” in grocery stores like Safeway. Instead, look to shelves in the bakery section for fresh-baked, un-sliced whole loaves of bread without sugar added.

Even that is a crap shoot. Here I end up buying a national brand that comes in frozen:

https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product-finder?category=ecce-...

Nothing local has a crumb anything like https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product/multi-grain-boule/

At that price you should just make your own bread if you care about the flavor of bread. Bread makers aren't that expensive if you really desire the convenience of not having to kneed anything.

To be fair, it’s often difficult to find good bread in many countries. In asia it seems to be down to whether there are still french influences in the city you’re in.

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.