[Sca-cooks] Cheap supermarket artisanal breads

[rtanhil]

Yes, some of the supermarkets do seem to be coming out with
"artisanal" breads. Shoprite and Stop-n-Shop, the two big
supermarket chains in my little corner of Ner Jersey (well,
the only 2 in convenient driving distance to me, anyway) do
offer them. I brought a couple to a demo to snack on while
tablet weaving.

They tasted like waxed cardboard. They tasted exactly like
every other loaf of bread in the bread aisle, except that
they weren't sliced. They had so many dough conditioners to
delay staling that they tasted like they were larded with
Crisco after baking. The only 2 breads with any crust or any
flavor were the Calamata olive bread, which was rather
tasty, but $4/loaf, and the good old baguette shaped bread
in the paper sleeve ($1.30) that I remember from my
childhood as THE accompaniment to "homemade" soup (from a
mix--Mom couldn't cook, bless her). The Calamata bread was
still fresh the next day, but you could have driven nails
with the baguette.

But that's the point. Commercial bread is full of dough
conditioners to keep it fresh. It never develops a propper
crust, have a waxy mouth-feel, and the artificial flavor is
unpleasant and pronounced.

Maybe other parts of the country have better store bought
bread. Maybe it's one of those flavors that some people can
detect and others can't, like sucralose. To me, sucralose
(Splenda TM) tastes like I'm sucking on the lid of a tin
can. Others report no such thing.

By the way, the sourdough varieties of store-bakery bread
did not have that waxy taste at all, but I'm afraid that I'm
not a big fan of sourdough.

In any case, I'm going to have another go at learning to
bake this week. Thank you for the vote of confidence. I'll
try the timer. After all, I've got an event coming up in
March and Brighid has forever spoiled me to anything but the
real thing.

Berelinde