Bread in America

There were two things that one of my Czech friends told me she missed most about home when she was here: full service salons and bread. As for the salons, well, I know we have them here, but damned if I can find a reliably good one or a stylist whom I can communicate with in English as well as I can in Czech (and you all know how bad my Czech is). It isn't, of course, that we don't have bread here, or that it is hard to find, or even that it is outrageously expensive, though compared to prices in the Czech Republic, everything here is outrageously expensive. It's just unlike any bread in the world. For one thing, outside of a really big city, fresh bread, really fresh bread such as that trucked into the stores daily even in the provinces of Moravia and Bohemia, is a specialty item here.
The bread that we get in our grocery stores at home is made in a bakery some 3 hours away, and trucked into the grocery stores once a week. It is baked, sliced and packaged in plastic tube-like bags which are then closed with tiny vinyl coated wires called "twist ties," by the industry, and "twisties [twis-teez] by just about everyone else. These ties are different colors--actually only five-- blue, green, red, white or yellow-- and tell you on what day the bread was baked or delivered to the stores. For a while, there was rumor on the internet that it was possible to ensure that you are buying the freshest bread by choosing the correct color twisty (blue meant delivered in Monday, red was brought to the store later in the week), but that myth was debunked by the fine folks at Snopes.com , whose sole purpose is to test the truth of urban legends. According to Snopes, "since you aren't going to encounter a loaf that is more than a few days old," it is not worth the trouble to worry with the colors of the twist ties. Bread to us Americans isn't old or stale when it is several days old. At least not until we live abroad and have the luxury, and yes, it is a luxury, of fresh bread every day.
The texture of our bread is really different, too. It is soft, really soft, a bit more like knedlik or cake than typical chleb. The reason for this is the difference between American and European wheats and the milling processes. American breads are "enriched" (?!!) with fats and dairy products, salt and even sugar, whereas Europeans pretty much just use the flour, water, salt and rising agents. But to get a more European style bread, we have to pay more, a lot more. I suppose that the absence of preservatives also adds to the expense, since unlike typical American white bread, a leaner bread without them will get stale sooner. It is now possible for us to buy "fresh" bread (actually cooked from frozen dough shipped in ???) in our local store. The price for a ciabatta role is 46 cents each: about 10 Czech crowns! For one roll! Isn't it outrageous? And I have noticed that this 'fresh baked' bread isn't replenished daily. A loaf of bread is between $1.40 (30Kc) and $4.00 (60Kc) per loaf, depending on the brand. We usually pay just under $2.00 for ours.
There is another big difference and that is in variety. If you click on the photo below, you will see what I mean. The most popular is plain white or 'light' bread, and that is what most of the bread offered is, though you might also choose from one of 7 or so wheat breads, or rye, potato, oat, mixed grains, or various loaves enriched with extra fiber or made with reduced fat or sugar or salt.
It really isn't that I think that our bread is bad or even that I dislike it (Hey, I actually cried on the plane home last year when I took my first bite of a BLT-bacon, lettuce and tomato- sandwich, made with that soft American bread). It's just a matter of taste. And what you get used to. I have just gotten used to other breads. And now I miss them.