Thursday, October 2, 2008

Deceptive bread

The only thing that makes me more peeved than my team loosing their first playoff game is deceptive bread.

Deceptive bread. You've seen it before, and you've probably even bought it before.

You go to a grocery store's bakery department, and they have all this lovely bread out. It looks like it will be lovely, crusty, old-school style bread. You buy it, bring it home, and cut it open.

And it's like Wonder bread inside. Mushy, flavorless and just a waste of flour.

We have one grocery store chain around here that has some very deceptive breads. I swear, they make every "type" out of the same dough and it's just always disappointing buying bread there. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Dominick's.

I was doing some Crockpot Italian Beef for dinner tonight (dump a beef roast, a packet - yes, I said packet - of Italian Dressing mix on top, dump in some beef stock and some pepperoncini - those peppers they put in the salad at Olive Garden - and let it cook, then shred it up and serve it in the juices on a roll, pasta or whatever). But I did need to stop for bread. As much as I love the produce mart that is only about 2 blocks from my house, it's a BLEEEEEEEEP to get in and out of the parking lot to get home during rush hour. So, I went a couple blocks outta my way in the other direction to stop at Fresh Market.

It tries to be an upscale store - the produce section sure wants to be Whole Foods when it grows up. Lots of prepared food, but stuff that looks good. Surprisingly, the prices aren't bad on some items, so I do stop occassionally. I figured that an upscale place like this, if it was trying to be like Whole Foods, had to have some half-decent bread.

WRONG.

I bought a four pack of long rolls. I was not happy when I sliced into them when I got home. Gummy, no good bread structure, no flavor, just all over ICK. Bad crust. Distengrates into nothing as soon as it gets moist. Bleech.

I might be a bit spoiled... I grew up in a largely Italian and Polish area, and good bakeries were easy to find. I have expectations with bread. I don't see it as filler.

Stinkin' deceptive bread.

3 comments:

Scarehaircare said...

Life is definitely too short for deceptive bread. Our rolls tonight were the same way. The kids didn't save me any bread but did tell me that they weren't crusty. I ate my IB over rice.

Unknown said...

I'd have rather had rice, noodles or cous cous (it freaks the hubby out that I love cous cous with pot roast-ish things, but I do) than the bread tonight.

I can deal with bad bread when I know I'm buying bad bread. I just hate it when it looks so crusty and perfect and it turns out to be mush.

That Word Guy said...

Gonnella Tuscan bread, available at the supermarket.

99.9% of breads sold both in supermarkets and bakeries these days is what my sister's kids call gush (rhymes with push) bread: Wonder bread in all of its many guises.